


The End Of The Road

by orphan_account



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope gives in and Kelley almost gives up</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You and I

**Author's Note:**

> First of two or three chapters

Victory had become comfortable for the team. It was something they slipped into with ease, a golden mood that turned slightly fuzzy at the edges as the nights stretched on, laughter bright and shiny, the edge of game-time stress worn down by the score lit up in neon lights above the stadium.

Noon games were early and hot, and by the time Kelley stepped off the field her hair was almost black with sweat. She could feel the victory in her bones, so natural, so expected, but something she didn’t want to take for granted quite yet. Not yet. She slapped a few hands, grabbed a water bottle and took her spot at the end of the bench. 

She kept her eyes fixed on Hope, on the way she took shuffling side steps to stay loose, swinging her arms, on occasion shouting something at Becky, who always hung back as close to Hope as she could. Most of the team wouldn’t notice it, but Hope looked nervous. Nothing big, nothing that would threaten her quality of play, but enough to keep her on her toes, bouncing up and down when typically she’d pace calmly. Kelley had seen it after a particularly close call in the box, when Hope had walked up to Becky afterwards and thrown an arm around her shoulder, speaking too quietly for anyone else to hear but most likely tearing into her for a bad rotation between the backs.

Kelley spent only ten minutes on the bench, one leg crossed over the other, reclined almost casually. She ignored the conversation taking up space among the rest of her teammates. She ignored the ball, the action taking place on the other half of the field. She watched Hope.

She wanted to remember this. Remember the look on Hope’s face when the final whistle blew, watch the smile start small and spread wider with the presence of her teammates. Remember how each of them hugged her, how this team held her up and placed her on a pedestal where she deserved to be, remember how far Hope had come, to now have a team like this that only cared about celebrating their most talented goalkeeper, not tearing her down, not shutting her out. She wanted to remember Hope like this — happy, celebrated, fulfilled. This was her favorite version of Hope.

When the final whistle blew, the players moved slowly towards Hope, wrapping her in huge hugs, each with something special to say to her. Even Mallory was unafraid to throw her arms around Hope, yelling something about her being "the champ" while Hope laughed and steadied the smaller player with two hands and told her not to get overexcited. Kelley hung back for a second, something warm swelling in her chest as she watched Hope congratulated by each of the players. 

She finally moved towards Hope, and they didn’t even hug, just offered a high five and a smack on the ass and a smirk and an “I told you so.” But Hope caught her wrist before she could move away, her eyes fixing on Kelley, and that swelling in her chest reached a new level, became warm and held her still, frozen in the July afternoon.

“Thank you for believing in me first,” Hope said. The words were soft, gentle but the way Hope was looking at her almost knocked Kelley off balance. She clenched her jaw, stuttering for a moment before simply nodding and turning away, knowing they would talk about this later. There was always later.

***

_Kelley is shy in the locker room. It’s the first time she’s felt this way, tongue tied and cotton mouthed, since sixth grade, perhaps earlier. Her confidence always filled her, floated her like a balloon, knowing that no matter what team she was placed on she would be good enough, better than at least a few other players, loud and funny in a slightly obnoxious and entirely endearing way. But this is different._

_She pauses in the door, her hands clutching onto her bag, trying to scan, trying to read this team before they noticed her arrival. She can see the cliques easily, the ways they clump together throughout the room, chattering inanely, those who have been around for awhile checking up on one another, making up for lost time._

_She can't help but notice the one player sitting alone across the locker room._

_Hope is the first to see Kelley. She lifts her eyes and fixes them onto Kelley, emotionless, untrusting, guarded. The moment sticks, stretches, lasting for three seconds that feel much longer._

_One._

_Kelley notices the way Hope is wrapping her fingers, carefully, delicately, not even needing to glance down to know that she has the tape aligned._

_Two._

_Hope drinks in the curve of Kelley’s jaw, the uncertain twitching of her finger tips, the shift of her weight from one weight to another, letting herself smirk slightly at the delicate uncertainty of another young upstart._

_Three._

_Kelley wrenches her eyes away, presses the moment into the back of her mind and heads to the left side of the locker room. It's time to get down to business._

***

Thanks to Mallory, they don’t celebrate quite as wildly as they used to.

They like to blame Mallory — after all, having a just-turned-18-year-old as the staple of their starting roster makes it pretty difficult to go raise hell at a bar or a club — but it’s honestly a good change of pace. Half of the team is recently married or getting married, and all of the veterans are still exhausted from the Victory Tour. Tobin, who blacked out for the first and last time while still in Canada, likes to joke that she’s still a little drunk from it.

So instead, it’s dinner at an Italian restaurant, with HAO eating half of the table’s bread and Hope surprising no one by ordering bottles of wine all around and making sure that the under-age girls still get some poured into empty water glasses. The laughter is there, the smiles, and Rapinoe at one point stands and announces that they will each give a toast to Hope, to her accomplishment, to this day that is dedicated to her.

“You are the GOAT, even though you don’t know what that means,” Rapinoe says, and the whole team bursts into laughter.

“You have come so far and we are so proud of you,” says HAO in her turn, and next Ashlyn is standing and coming close to tears as she thanks Hope for teaching her how to be brave on and off the line, on and off the pitch. Carli gives a brief yet passionate speech, and everyone teases the best friends as they hug yet again. Alyssa, in her quiet way, is the one to almost force Hope to get teary, as she quietly explains how her confidence was low when she started, how she never felt that she could live up, how Hope made her feel like she was strong enough to do anything.

They talk and they talk and they talk. At a long table, their chairs too close to one another, their elbows touching, they each stood and spoke and they couldn’t stop speaking about Hope. She couldn’t help but think of nine years ago, nine years ago when she sat in the middle of a circle of chairs, when they couldn’t stop talking about her, when they couldn’t stop ripping her apart at the seams.

God, how far she had come.

Kelley, who sat on Hope’s left, was the last to speak. She stood, unsteady from her third glass of wine, and raised it towards Hope, who openly let her eyes trace up and down the defender’s body.

“You are the best,” Kelley said, loudly, in that goofy, high-pitched voice she got when she was drunk. The whole team cheered and pounded the table at that, and Kelley sat, her speech the shortest of them all. But Hope didn’t mind, because as Kelley sat, she heard the second part of the speech, murmured, not even for Hope to hear, an afterthought of a drunken mind.

“You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

***

_Kelley walks out of the coach’s room in a daze._

_Defense. Kelley O’Hara, Defender._

_It sounds odd coming off her tongue, as she murmurs it quietly to herself. Defender. A goal-scorer turned defender. Everything she knows about herself, about her athletic drive, flipped on its head. A defender._

_What the hell is Pia thinking?_

_She walks out of the room and almost straight into Hope, who is leaned against the wall, scrolling through something on her phone. She jumps, then turns away quickly, muttering an apology as she tried to walk down the hall. A hand on her wrist stops her, and Kelley turns slowly to face Hope’s eyes._

_“I heard.” There's a look on Hope’s face, something different than the harsh, guarded look that normally keeps Kelley at bay. It was soft, a recognition of the struggle Kelley is facing. “I mean, Pia told me. She said you might need some help.”_

_Kelley laughs, harshly, and Hope’s face hardens a little. She regrets this, regrets making Hope think she was pushing her away, even as she feels the anger bubbling in her stomach._

_“Some help?” Kelley scoffs, shaking her head. “I’ll need a lot more than a little help. I’m not a defender. I’ve never been a defender. What the hell does she think she’s doing?”_

_Hope just nods, her hand still attached to Kelley’s wrist, a look of understanding still quiet in her eyes._

_“I mean, for God’s sake, I could put that damn ball in the net if she would play me once, just once, if she would just give me a chance.” Kelley feels close to shouting now, her voice rough. “But I don’t know how to keep the ball out of goal, I don’t know how to do this, I can’t do this.”_

_She stops talking with her voice strained, and for a moment, the only sound in the hallway is the panting, the rise and fall of Kelley’s chest as she holds in tiny sobs. Hope doesn't take a step closer, doesn't close the gap, doesn't try to offer comfort. But she doesn't pull away, either. She stays, steady._

_“Do you like coffee?” Kelley blinks at the question, so inane, so off-topic, and nods once. Hope nods as well, drops her arm, sticks her phone in her pocket, and jerks her head towards the door._

_“Then let’s go,” Hope says. “We’ll get some coffee and we’ll talk defense. I’ll teach, you’ll listen.”_

_She starts towards the door, but Kelley stays where she is, her feet rooted to the same spot. Hope looks back over her shoulder, then swivels, planting her hands on her hips._

_“Look, I’m not used to this either,” Hope says. “But you’re worth teaching. You’re talented. And I need you. So please, let’s go.”_

_After another second, Kelley nods slowly, then follows Hope. They walk silently side by side until they reach the cafe, where Hope orders two cappucinos, sits them down at a table by a window and begins to talk._

_They don't return to the hotel for hours._

***

When the team returned to the hotel, Hope made an announcement — she had bought more booze. This time it was champagne, although there was a handle or two of vodka in her closet that she wanted to whip out later on in the night.

They piled into the suite that Jill always reserved for them, JJ carrying four or five board games under one arm and two bottles of champagne in the other hand, Alex holding her Beats speakers in one hand, music already pulsating from them. Hope flopped across one of the beds, flat on her back, watching as several of the girls danced in the middle of the room. 

Mostly, she watched Kelley, laughing as she tried to do a stanky leg and then tried to hit the whip, both of which were overwhelmingly unsuccessful. Her laughter turned Kelley’s head, and the defender pranced over towards Hope, shaking her hips and pointing both fingers at her keeper, shouting along to the beat.

“Thanks for the alcohol,” she chirped, leaping onto the bed, landing on her knees and holding herself up on her palms, her body suspended partially over Hope, hair dangling so close that she could smell her shampoo.

“No problem,” Hope murmured, her voice raspy, gripping her hands into fists to keep herself from reaching out to drag Kelley closer. “Wanna go kick some ass at Uno?”

“I think we’re playing Settlers first,” Kelley said, and Hope groaned, because Alex always cheated and Tobin always threw things and the last time they played she was pretty sure JJ had cried. But of course Kelley just grinned and leapt back off the bed, grabbing Hope by her wrists and yanking her to her feet, and Hope stood up so that their bodies were too close and their mouths were in a surprising proximity and they just laughed, letting the slight buzz fuel the way their hands always wandered, always searched for a little more skin, a little more warmth.

Alex corralled the group into a circle as Becky popped open another bottle of champagne, and Tobin sternly read out the rules, her eyes daring anyone to try to cheat, even though they all knew that everyone would try to cheat and soon be too drunk to even tell if they were playing by the rules. Kelley leaned into Hope as the game began, her voice already beginning to slur slightly.

“You’re going down, just so you know,” she said, and Hope smirked.

“Am I?” She grinned down at Kelley, who flushed and then gripped Hope’s knee for a half second, sending a different type of flush through her body.

“You ready?” Kelley asked, and she leaned back, away from Hope, mischief taking hold of all her features, a laugh seeming ready to burst through her lips at any moment, and for God’s sake Hope was certain she might burst from happiness, so she just smiled, bit her tongue and picked up her cards.

***

_“Hey, are you ready?” Hope’s voice cuts through Kelley’s thoughts. She’s sitting on a bench in the locker room, knees pulled to her chest, eyes squished closed. She’s muttering to herself, the same chant over and over again, trying to convince herself of her own worth, of her own purpose._

_You can do this. You can do this. You can do this._

_It must show in her eyes, when she looks up at Hope. She’s not ready. She’s not close to ready. And Hope — who has sat next to her at breakfast every day of two camps, who has woken her up morning after morning with texts asking after her training, who has spent hours on the field after practice with her — she can tell in just a second of looking at Kelley’s wide eyes._

_“Okay, listen to me.” Hope squats down, resting both hands on Kelley’s knees, and Kelley stares, still shocked at each interaction, at each brush of their fingers and arm around her shoulders after practice, amazed at every second that Hope meets her eyes and holds that gaze as if she’s holding on for dear life._

_“You are not Ali Krieger.” Kelley winces and Hope only grips her knees harder. "You’re not. But you don’t have to be. I’m not asking you to be. I’m asking you to attack from the wing. I’m asking you to hold down the defense and then use your offensive knowledge to counter, okay? I’m asking you to be Kelley O’Hara. The best Kelley O’Hara you can be. Okay?”_

_Kelley nods, and suddenly her throat is thick, clogged with emotion, so she just keeps nodding, stupidly, as Hope searches her eyes for some flicker of confidence._

_“Be the best Kelley O’Hara you can be,” Hope repeats, and she knocks her fist gently into Kelley’s bicep. “And you know what? That’s a pretty good person to be. That’s a damn good player to be.”_

_Now Kelley is doing all she can to hold it in, to keep tears from rising and her face from flushing, biting her lip and tipping her head back, then dropping her chin to look at Hope._

_“Thank you,” Kelley says, choking the words out. “Thank you for believing in me.”_

_Hope squeezes the same arm, Kelley’s left arm, and smiles a small smile, one that Kelley has been seeing more and more of lately._

_“Soon, the whole world will believe in you.” Hope’s smile grows, and her thumb brushes against Kelley’s skin, forcing color to her cheeks and her throat. “But I’m honored to be the first.”_

***  
She was the first girl that Hope had ever thought of as beautiful.

In the past, she noticed girls who were pretty or hot, girls she wanted to pin into a bed or fuck against a wall, girls she fantasized about without even bothering to put any thought into the details. She noticed the curve of a woman’s hips or the way she walked or licked her lips. She looked for vapidity, for a lack of substance, wanting to briefly attach her attraction to someone and then let it pass, let it fade, let it burn bright and smoke out in almost the same breath.

But God Kelley was beautiful. That was all Hope could think as she sat on the floor next to her, the rest of the team fading out as Kelley came into crisp, sharp focus. She kept leaning into her, letting Kelley rest her head on her shoulder, letting the space between them fade as well. They were splitting their own bottle of champagne at this point, drinking straight from the bottle, and Kelley kept grabbing at it at the precise moment that Hope was trying to take a drink, spilling the liquid more than once, giving Hope the perfect opportunity to give her a shove, to keep her hand on her waist for a few too many seconds.

This was the part of each celebratory night that the team knew well. When it reached the earlier hours of the morning, as the team dispersed and found their ways back to their room, Kelley walked towards Pugh, catching her from behind in a headlock and laughing as they both stumbled for a few steps.

“Hey look—“ Kelley dropped her voice, trying to keep her words level. “Do you mind if Tobin is in—“

“Yeah, yeah, she can stay with me so you can stay with Hope,” Pugh said, her voice a slight whine. “Just let me go, I’m tired.”

Kelley smiled, releasing the younger girl with a soft 'thank you’ and a little shove towards their room. Then she made her way back to Hope, who was leaning against the wall, watching with her eyes slitted slightly, her hands shoved in her pockets in a hopeless effort to keep them to herself.

“You coming?” Hope asked, and Kelley smiled even wider. She didn’t slow her pace as she neared Hope, walking straight up to her until their hips were touching and her hands were on Hope’s waist, pressing her back into the wall. She lifted her chin, as if it was a challenge, their mouths too close, breathing each other’s air.

“You fucking know it.” She kissed Kelley right there, up against the wall, with Pugh and Tobin and at least five other teammates still walking away, their footsteps fading at the end of the hall. It felt like a first kiss, their mouths slow and languid, hands slipping under cloths to grab hold of skin, their touch the only thing anchoring them to the ground. 

Hope kissed Kelley and the world melted away.

She wasn’t even sure how long they spent kissing there, but she was shocked out of the moment when Kelley’s hands drifted upwards, fingers tugging at the edge of her bra, hips pressing insistently forward. Hope became very aware of the fact that Kelley somehow, magically it seemed, had worked her shirt up until it was halfway off, had pressed one leg in between Hope’s, had let her lips drop to Hope’s neck. 

She was too worked up to form full sentences, but somehow she pushed Kelley back, holding up a room key and dragging her down the hall by one wrist. Halfway down the hall, she turned around, catching Kelley’s other wrist and pulling her by both hands, laughing at the look Kelley was giving her, because if she didn’t laugh she was going to stop walking and press back into Kelley and she needed to get them into a room, behind closed doors, into a private space.

The second the hotel door closed behind them, Hope pinned Kelley against it, pushed her knee forward and spread Kelley’s legs until she audibly heard the girl gasp, pulled her t-shirt off with both hands, pressed Kelley’s shoulders back into the door and let her lips wander from her jaw to her shoulder and back.

“Hope, please.” Kelley is insistent and her hands are under Hope’s shirt, unclasping her bra, blindly tugging off every article of clothing she can reach, her head leaned back against the door, uncertain of what she’s even asking for. Hope pulls back, her eyes covering every inch of Kelley’s bare torso, and she leans in for another kiss, deeper, longer.

“This is all I want.” Hope cradles Kelley’s face in one hand, and Kelley looks at her as if she’s seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time in days, in weeks, in years. “This. Right now. This.”

***

_The first time Hope kisses her, it’s quick, unexpected, a moment in a hotel room that almost doesn’t happen._

_At first, it almost happens on the field, after the semifinal game against Canada, when Kelley runs to Hope and into open arms, picked up off the ground for a moment, her face buried into Hope’s neck. They’re both drenched and sweat, they’re both beyond elated and beyond exhausted, but there’s something between them that crackles, something that’s been building momentum for weeks, for months, for God knows how long._

_She pulls back from Hope’s arms and sees something in her eyes, sees the way her eyes flit down to her mouth, and it’s all she can do to break away completely, because she knows that if she ever does get a chance to kiss Hope she doesn’t want it to be in a stadium in front of a team she’s falling in love with a crowd chanting “USA” at the top of their lungs. Instead, she smacks Hope on the ass like always, grinning, and floats away._

_But the second they’re back in their hotel room, Hope is pushing her backwards and Kelley barely has time to loop her arms around Hope’s neck before they’re kissing, hard and fast and panicky, Hope’s hands moving to touch her face, her neck, her waist. There’s a moment where Hope’s hands are gone, and then she’s picked Kelley up as if she weighs nothing, pushed her back into the door again, and Kelley is wrapping her legs around Hope and digging her fingers into her shoulders and trying to keep herself from letting out something between a gasp and a sigh and a scream._

_It’s ten minutes, maybe a little more, and then Hope is pulling back, still holding Kelley up, her eyes fixed on Kelley’s swollen lips._

_“We need to stop.” Kelley closes her eyes at the words, then opens them quickly._

_“Right, right.” Her feet are back on the ground but her legs shake so violently that she’s not even sure if she can stand. Instead, Kelley leans against the door, and Hope remains leaned into her, one hand tracing her face._

_“For now,” Hope added, and Kelley let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “I just… I can’t keep doing this or I won’t be able to stop.”_

_Kelley shivers at the words, noticing the way Hope’s hips are still pressed into hers, breathing in and aching for the taste of her mouth again._

_“Okay,” Kelley says slowly, trying to force herself back into normalcy, trying to find a smile despite the way her body trembles. “Let’s go then.”_

_Hope grins slightly, taking a step backwards and nodding, shoving her hands back into her pockets, suggesting that they change to go to the bar. For the first time, Kelley stays turned around while she changes, not even trying to look at Hope as they attempt to maintain a casual conversation._

_All that Kelley can think about as she changes is where this came from. Eating breakfast should to shoulder ever morning, Kelley stealing fruit off of her plate, the whole team watching with confusion as she leaned into Hope’s shoulder and Hope simply leaned back into her. The fond little smiles, the quick hugs before kick off. The night she couldn’t sleep because of a thunderstorm, the night that Hope made a blanket fort between their beds, dragging a mattress onto the ground and crisscrossing blankets between their beds, then forced Kelley to lay down there, watching TV and talking softly until they drifted asleep facing each other, their legs lightly pressed into one another._

_She thinks about the way their hands always reached for each other, the way that Hope always smiled around her, the way that she opened up suddenly and swiftly. She thinks about the Thursday night when she came back and Hope was crying, curled on one side in bed, and Kelley wrapped her in both arms and held her, never asking what was wrong, just making sure that things were eventually right._

_She thinks about the first time that she noticed just how damn beautiful Hope is, and she thinks about every time after that, every time she’s noticed the beauty under the harsh exterior. She thinks about how long she has hoped to kiss her, every single time she’s lost focus thinking of the way Hope’s mouth would feel against hers._

_Mostly she thinks, no, she obsesses over the way that Hope held her face in one hand, how tenderly her fingers stroked her jaw, how gentle that moment had been. She’s noticed a softening in Hope in the past few months, a new side of the keeper that laughed at jokes and encouraged her teammates and felt comfortable, perhaps even safe, around people, at least for moments at a time._

_It’s all she can think about. Hope is all she thinks about. The team goes out in skin-tight black dresses and limits their drinks to three apiece and for hours Kelley tries to dance, tries to sing along to her favorite songs, tries to act as crazy as possible. But she can feel Hope’s eyes on her, and every time she glances over she catches her gaze, too intense, too intimate, and she’s forced to look away because that look is making her feel an all new type of crazy._

_When they get back from the bar, the door barely closes before Kelley kisses Hope. It’s quick and brazen, then hesitant, Kelley pulling back, her hands still on Hope’s waist but her eyes widening with something close to fear, and there’s a half second of dread before Hope is kissing her back._

_The night becomes a blur of tugging at clothes and pressing into sheets and Kelley is muttering under her breath and Hope’s breath is fast and ragged. In her head, she’s trying to make this just about sex, she’s trying to make herself believe this is a release, a quick momentary distraction, but she knows it’s not and Hope knows it’s not and she’s damned if she’s going to keep herself from sinking into the moment as deeply as she can._

_And that would be fine if it weren’t for afterwards, if it weren’t for Hope’s hands in her hair, Hope’s hands tracing her face, Hope’s hands pulling her closer, not letting her run away, holding her still._

_“Don’t go anywhere, please.” Hope’s voice is insistent, quiet, and it’s in this moment that Kelley realizes how much of Hope she holds in the palm of her hand, how vulnerable she is lying next to Kelley, begging her to stay under the covers. “Just stay. I just want to stay like this.”_

_So she stays. She stays, and in the morning Hope is gone but the bed is still warm and she comes back with coffee that tastes like a peace offering._

_She stays. Her chest feels heavy with a future heartbreak, but she stays._

***

Hope had half of her clothes off before Kelley could even register what was happening. They were pressed close, skin on skin, wrapped around one another, and Kelley wanted Hope so badly she could hardly keep her breathing steady. But she slowed them down, pressed her hands into Hope’s stomach and gently held her at bay, broke off their kiss and looked up into her eyes, watching them transform from hungry to curious.

“You okay?” Hope asked, and she nodded, wrapping her arms around the keeper. In this moment, she just wanted to hold on, just wanted to slow down, to stop acting like they were racing time every damn second.

She seemed to understand. Hope always seemed to understand, to see every nuance of Kelley’s body language and to adjust herself accordingly. She rolled onto one side, running her hand up Kelley’s side, tracing her ribcage with one finger.

“Tell me something.” Kelley turned her head to the side, watching Hope’s face. She wanted to remember this. She wanted to remember all of it. Their time together always felt like it was sped up, like it ended too soon, and she was constantly afraid it would be over and she’d have to cling to memories. So she tried to convince herself to memorize each second, every detail, as she looked at Hope, half naked in bed next to her.

“I’m retiring.” The words felt like gunshots in Kelley’s chest. Her eyes widened, and in that second she felt it, felt the moment speeding up, slipping away, the memories already out of reach, Hope already fading away from her. Hope was laying next to her but she was miles away, and Kelley couldn’t breathe, dear God she couldn’t breathe.

“You— what— Hope!” She sat up, pulling away, and Hope’s hands were reaching for her but now her skin felt like fire and Kelley was tired of being burned, again and again.

“Kelley, look, it’s been coming for awhile and I’m not even sure when I’ll—“ Kelley was out of bed, pulling on her sweatpants and refusing to look back, refusing to let Hope pull her back down. She could feel it, she could feel it coming. She was about to get ripped apart again. This time, she wasn’t going to let it happen while she was laying down.

“Shut up, Hope.” Kelley stood, turning around, her heart dropping at the sight of Hope. Her hair was mussed, lips swollen, eyes wide and heavy and inexplicably broken, as if she wasn’t the one doing the breaking, as if she wasn’t finding a way to rip Kelley apart just when she thought she was back to a semblance of normalcy again. “Just shut up.”

“I wanted you to be the first to know,” Hope said weakly, and Kelley shook her head, grabbing her shirt from the ground. 

She couldn’t breathe.

“Shut up, Hope.” She choked it out one more time and then she stumbled out of the room, slamming the door behind her, stalking down the hall. She barely made it around the corner before she ran into Becky, and before the defender could ask what was wrong she had collapsed against the wall, tears welling and sobs ripping at her throat as she sank into the ground. She heard Becky murmur something soft — what did she say, was it “not again” or did Kelley just imagine that? — and then she felt arms around her.

What did they have without soccer? What held them together besides national team camps and NWSL games twice a season? They fell for one another under showers of gold confetti, they learned to love and hurt and forgive and accept under the weight of medals. Without soccer, what would keep Hope with her? Without soccer, how could Hope love her? How could Kelley keep her? How could any of this, all of this, make sense?

In Becky’s arms, Kelley felt broken. And God, she couldn’t breathe.


	2. Burn

There were things Becky refused to say when her friends were hurting. 

The main one was the most common — “It’s okay.” She hated that. She hated acting like anything was okay. Not when her friends were shattered, not when they felt broken. When they felt that way, it wasn’t okay, nothing was okay. Becky wasn’t one to pretend. She wasn’t one to fake it.

Kelley felt small in her arms. Becky cradled her the best she could, sitting on the scratchy carpet of the hell. She didn’t hush Kelley, didn’t tell her to calm down. She let her cry, let the long, gasping sobs work themselves out, and she closed her own eyes to ward off tears when Kelley gripped at her sweatshirt and held on tightly, as if willing Becky to not let go, to stay where she was.

“What happened?” Becky murmured. She couldn’t control the affection in her voice, the way it made her soft and hard at the same time, wanting to soothe and protect all at once. She gripped Kelley’s shoulders, willing the girl to calm down, to put words together. “Kelley, please.”

She just stayed silent, her sobs growing farther and farther apart. Eventually, she was still in Becky’s arms, trembling but not moving, not making a sound. There was noise in the hall — Tobin and Mal had stepped out of one room, Carli and HAO out of another — and they remained quiet, looking to Becky like always for guidance. But Becky was lost, clinging onto Kelley on the floor and completely unsure of what to do, whether to move or stay here, whether to comfort her or snap her out of her misery.

It was Carli, in the end, who made the first move. She walked across the hall and crouched in front of Kelley, reaching out to touch her face in a hesitant motion, indescribably tender. This was something more than pity, more than sympathy. Carli was familiar with this moment, with Kelley on the floor alone, with picking her up and piecing her back together in the same motion. So she was delicate as she touched Kelley the first time, waiting for the defender to raise her eyes, steeling herself against the hunted look in her eyes.

Jesus, she was broken.

“Kell, you can stay in my room, okay?” Carli kept her voice low and gentle. “Come on, you can sleep in here with us. Just let me get you in there, please.”

She hooked her hands under Kelley’s arms, carefully pulling until she was standing. Carli paused for a moment, and then she pulled Kelley close to her. She was limp in her arms, hardly even responding to the hug for a moment before she wrapped her arms around Carli’s waist, shoulders shaking slightly again. 

“What did she do?” Carli dropped her voice to a whisper, trying to keep Becky from hearing. “Kell, please, what did she do?”

“She left,” Kelley said, and her voice was hoarse, unsteady. “She left like always.”

Carli just nodded, baffled. She placed a hand on Kelley’s back, guiding her towards their door, and HAO took her by the arm and pulled her inside. They made eye contact over Kelley’s slumped shoulders for a moment, eyes sharp with concern, then HAO looked away and let the door close.

“What the actual fuck?” Mallory asked, and her eyes were wide, staring at the closed door. “Carli, what was that? What’s wrong with Kelley? Is she okay?”

“Mal, go inside.” Carli didn’t even look at the girl, just looking at Becky, who was asking a million questions with her eyes, hands on her hips in a slightly defensive stance. But Mal sputtered at that, looking at Becky and then Tobin for back up, for an answer, for some type of explanation.

“Someone tell me what’s going on, please.” Mal’s voice was raised, and Becky jerked her eyes at Tobin, who nodded and grabbed the forward by her arm, towing her back into their room. There was the sound of low voices as their door closed, and then it was just Becky and Carli in the hall, eyeing one another.

“She broke my favorite defender again, didn’t she?” Becky’s voice was gentle, not the accusatory tone it might have taken a year, two years ago. She looked to Carli for answers, not for a fight.

Carli sighed, rubbing one wrist. She didn’t want to be having this conversation. She didn’t think this conversation was one that needed to happen anymore. The last time she and Hope had talked about it, she’d been planning— but God knows how easily Hope could be scared off of commitment, how quickly she could hide the vulnerable parts of herself, how easily she could run from Kelley, again and again and again. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Carli muttered. “Becky, she wants to spend her life with that girl.”

“I know.” Becky shook her head, running a hand through her hair. “She loves her, we all know that. But that hasn’t changed since they met and she keeps hurting her. Please, tell me, when is she going to stop?”

Carli wasn’t one to get angry, especially at her teammates. She remained calm when others couldn’t do the same, gentle with the younger players, encouraging with the veterans, demanding perfection but commanding respect with humility. She worked herself harder than she asked anyone else to work. She led by example. And this kept her from getting angry. It kept her calm.

But now, she was angry. She didn’t know at who — not Hope, not Kelley, not Becky — and she wanted to hit something, she wanted to scream.

“I don’t know, god damn it.” Carli gripped her fists together tightly. “How much can two people suffer before they just fucking get to be together?”

***

_She’s screaming. Her voice is going to be shot tomorrow, but for now, all she can do is shout, throwing her arms around Alex, around Tobin, around everyone she sees._

_Then she sees Hope._

_She walks towards her, a smile stretching her face so wide that it hurts._

_“Solo!” Hope looks at her, and their smiles mirror each other, their eyes bright and shiny. She walks towards Hope like a magnet’s dragging her towards her keeper. “You did it! You fucking did it!”_

_“I did it?” She’s shouting back, grinning, pointing at herself. “You fucking did it! The best fucking defender in the world!”_

_Kelley stalks after her, Hope back pedaling away, and something in the way they are smiling at each other is tinged with everything else that has happened in the last week, blurry nights and lazy mornings, intimacy between bedsheets and unfettered fondness everywhere else. Hope stops and she grabs hold of Kelley, pulls her into a bear hug, presses her too tightly. All Kelley can do is bury her face in Hope’s neck and hold on for dear life._

_“I want to kiss you so badly,” Hope says, and Kelley closes her eyes to keep from pulling back, to keep from kissing Hope in front of a full stadium for the second time this tournament. She nods though, because all she wants right now is Hope, damn the Olympic gold, damn everything else._

_“I know.” She shouts it, because she has to in order to be heard and because she can. “I know."_

_The medal is weightless around Kelley’s neck. She keeps reaching up to touch it, holding it in her hands. She leans over and Hope catches her eye, her smile so open, so free, and this is the happiest she’s ever seen her keeper. That smile keeps Kelley hooked to the ground, keeps her from flying away, but she’s absolutely certain that if it weren’t for Hope, she wouldn’t be able to keep her feet on the pitch._

_After it all dies down, they find each other. And this time, Hope doesn’t rush things._

_She holds Kelley’s face in both hands. She kisses her forehead, both cheeks, the tip of her nose, her eyes, every inch of her face before finally pressing a kiss to her mouth. Kelley melts into it, but Hope keeps her hands at bay, kissing up her jaw, tugging at her ear, kissing her throat. She lowers Kelley into bed, kisses her on the mouth once again, keeping her body held away._

_“I’m so proud of you.” Her mouth is on the curve of Kelley’s throat and she feels the younger girl shiver beneath her. “I’m so, so proud of you.”_

_“You too.” Kelley reaches up to grab hold of the medal that Hope is still wearing, using it to pull her even closer. “You are incredible.”_

_Hope presses their foreheads together gently, noses brushing, and they both smile so gently, so sweetly, and she feels as if her chest was breaking open, as if something she’d held back for years, perhaps forever, is finally rushing through her. All of her body pulses with it, this warmth, this sweetness, and she kisses Kelley again, this time letting it linger, sinking into it fully, and Kelley lets out a low moan and it’s all Hope can do to keep herself together._

_She opens her eyes, pulling back, and Kelley lets out a slight sigh, looking up, her eyes wild with want and concern._

_“What is it Hope?” Her voice sounds ragged, and Hope smiles._

_“I just want to remember this.” Hope kisses her forehead. “Let me remember this.”_

***

Becky was the one who pieced together what happened. Kelley didn't really talk, just muttered something about retirement and something else about being left before she buried her face in HAO’s pillow and asked them to leave her alone. 

But Carli was the one who refused to leave. She sat next to Kelley, her hand on her back. She let the pain ride itself out, until Kelley was still. Anyone else would’ve thought that she was asleep, but Carli knew that she was just in her head, hiding herself where no one else could reach her, could hurt her.

She told Becky to go find Hope. She told her it had to be a mistake, and Kelley laughed at that, a muffled and bitter noise, shaking her head. But Becky left anyways, unsure of what she would find.

In the end, the answer was much simpler than she expected. She walked outside and Hope was there, standing in the middle of the hall, staring at her phone with panicky eyes. She looked up at the noise of the door shutting behind Becky and her eyes widened with hopefulness.

“Becky, please tell me you’ve seen Kelley, please I need to—“ 

Becky grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into her own room, trying to keep her mouth shut, trying to keep her anger in, because a small fragment of her knew that this wasn’t Hope’s fault, that there had to be an explanation, but most of her was willing to hit Hope straight across her face for doing this to Kelley again.

“You have two minutes.” Becky crossed her arms. “I want to believe in you, Hope. But you have two minutes to explain why you’re doing this to her again and then I am walking out of this room.”

For a moment, Hope looked so helpless, so lost, that Becky just wanted to grab her and hold her. 

She knows Hope has seen pain. She remembers the Hope that she used to know, the one who sat on her own in the locker room, neatly wrapping her fingers and ignoring her teammates, who sat alone at breakfast and on the plane and the bus, always alone but never showing if she felt lonely. She remembers the Hope that refused to cry at anything, that grit her teeth through anything and everything, through cleats in her ribs and a damaged shoulder and the heartbreak of her team shutting her out and never quite letting her back in.

The Hope who stands before her is different. This is the Hope who openly cried after winning the World Cup, who takes new players under her arm and congratulates them after every new accomplishment, who is invited to weddings and who shows up early to birthday parties and baby showers with too many gifts. This is the Hope who hosts movie nights in her room and wedges herself between her friends at dinner and dominates conversations with her jokes, however nerdy they may be. She laughs, she gossips, she calls out Alex on her bad taste in music and makes fun of Rapinoe’s clothes and throws pieces of popcorn at Ashlyn during team meetings.

This is the Hope who loves Kelley. The Hope who openly, happily loves Kelley. Who left her life behind for a girl who was seemingly in love with someone else. Who waited. Who has been patient for over a year. Who has rebuilt everything about herself, her friendships, her style of play, her style of living. This is the Hope who Becky has come to love and trust and support, who she adores. 

But this Hope wasn’t supposed to hurt her best friends anymore. She wasn’t supposed to push people away, to lie, to hide. And she wasn’t supposed to break Kelley’s heart anymore.

“Two minutes, Hope,” Becky said, and her voice shook. Hope opened her mouth. Becky waited.

***

_They end almost as quickly as they began._

_The night they win the Olympics, Hope presses Kelley into bed and keeps her there, holding on again, tracing her body with her fingertips as they fall in and out of sleep._

_“I love you,” Kelley murmurs in her ear, and Hope only sucks in a quick breath before saying the same, kissing her cheek._

_The next morning, the bed next to Kelley is cold. There is no coffee as a peace offering. Hope returns around midday, while Kelley is wandering the Olympic Village with Alex and Tobin. She sits on the side of the bed, alone in their hotel room, unsure of what to do. She holds her medal in both hands. She wanders what comes next._

_They share the same bed that night, and the next, and the rest of their nights in London are spent together. In the day, they don’t speak, they stay quiet, they rejoice with their team without feeling the need to look one another in the eye. For Kelley, it’s embarrassment. For Hope, it’s shame._

_At night, they know each other’s bodies with familiarity, intimacy. In the day, they are strangers._

_The third day they return to the States, Hope calls Kelley. They talk for an hour, about nothing and everything, how odd it is to be back in America, how foreign their homes feel. They text for a week, then two. Then Kelley is booking a flight to Washington. It’s a week together, then a flight back to Atlanta, then radio silence for weeks, then for months._

_There’s never an explanation. Hope doesn’t offer one and Kelley doesn’t ask for one. She accepts the silence. She finds other noise to fill it. She pretends she doesn’t ache with the loss, ache for Hope’s quiet jokes, her understanding glances across packed rooms, the feel of her hands against her skin._

_Halfway across the country, Hope closes her eyes and shuts out the pain. It’s a loss she hasn’t felt before, a loss of possibility. She feels as if she’s pressed “stop” on a movie before letting it play out, walking away in the opening chapters of a new book. It feels wrong. But she’s a coward — that’s what she tells herself — she is a coward. She is not brave like Kelley. She does not take risks like Kelley._

_She will do what goalkeepers do best. She will wait on the defensive, ready to fend off what comes near her. She will not venture outside of her box. She will hold her line and she will protect, protect, protect._

_Hope gets married. It’s easy. Jerramy is there. He is tall, strong, interested, safe. When she tells this to Carli, her best friend, her only friend, laughs. He isn’t safe, she says, he’s dangerous. But their definitions are different._

_Jerramy doesn't know her. And he doesn’t want to. He sees her walls and never tries to break them down, never tries to chip away. He loves her from a distance. He never makes her heart swell. He never makes her bleed. He gives just enough and takes even less and he never, ever oversteps his bounds. He makes it easy for Hope to protect herself. So she marries him._

_Kelley comes to the wedding. She comes to the wedding and Hope is beautiful in her dress, a vision in white, and she knows that she’ll need to be drunk to make her way through the rest of this evening. She sits in the back and refuses to meet Carli’s eye. None of their other teammates come. Most of them don’t know Hope well enough, are secretly afraid of her._

_Kelley comes to the wedding and her eyes are dull. She wears a green dress with an open back and her hair curled and Hope can hardly rip her eyes away from the sight. They speak once, fleetingly, and it’s all Hope can think about on her wedding day, the only vision, the only moment, that consumes her mind like a wildfire. In these moments, she couldn’t care less about Jerramy._

_For a moment, just a moment, Hope imagines herself as the girl in the movies, the one who leaves the altar, who grabs the pretty girl in the green dress by the hand and runs away, who leaves all her fear behind and just lets herself love and be loved as she rides off into the sunset._

_Then she says the words, lets the “I do” tumble from her lips, and she tells herself that she is letting Kelley go._

_They’re fine. After the wedding, they’re fine. They don’t talk, they don’t do much more than communicate on the field, but they’re fine. Everything is fine._

_The team, of course, hates her, because this new Kelley doesn’t laugh as much, this new Kelley kicks at the ground when she messes up a drill and curses under her breath at herself after each mistake. This new Kelley makes friends just as easily but also lashes out at her old friends, pushing Alex and Tobin away and then letting them back in, her moods coming in ebbs and tides. This new Kelley is quick to anger and slow to forgive. Her eyes are empty and her heart is lukewarm and the team hates Hope for it._

***

“She didn’t let me finish,” Hope says, and Becky raises her eyebrows. The words don’t want to come out, but Hope needs to explain, so she lets them out in a sudden, surging wave. “I told her I’m retiring. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, I don’t know if it’ll be after these Olympics or the next. I told her that and she freaked out.”

“She thinks you’re leaving her, Hope.” Becky lets out a breath, her confidence slowly coming back, her faith in Hope slowly rebuilding itself. “Why does she think you’re leaving her?”

Hope shook her head. She knew why, of course she knew why. Because they had started with soccer, with Hope teaching Kelley on the field and with Kelley teaching Hope off the field. Because when they left these camps, Hope used to act as if she barely knew Kelley. Because they refused to acknowledge that anything existed off the field.

“Because she thinks if I leave soccer, I’ll leave her.” Hope sighed. “I get it, okay? I get it. I left her before and she’s just waiting for me to leave her again. I get it. But I’m not going to leave her.”

In what seemed to be less than a second, Becky crossed the room and caught Hope in her arms, pulling her into a hug that was more fierce than even she had expected.

“You could break that girl so easily,” Becky murmured, and Hope felt tears coming. She pulled away, nodding, not even trying to hold them back, rubbing them away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Believe me, I know.” She shook her head. “I know.”

***

_A year passes, then two._

_Hope pretends she isn’t in love with Kelley, and Kelley does the same. They don’t text each other pictures of baby animals. They don’t tweet back and forth. They don’t make jokes at breakfast. Hope is back to sitting alone or next to Carli._

_Slowly, Kelley warms back to her normal self. Or close to it. Her jokes come a beat slower, as does her smile. She doesn’t argue over who won a card game, simply giving her hand back to Tobin without a word. At all costs, she avoids Hope’s eyes, her touch, her presence. And when she laughs, her eyes still echo with loss, even as months stretch into years, even as the memories of London begin to fade into a past that seems increasingly distant._

_Kelley hurts her ankle. Hope calls three times, then four. She leaves voicemails. She sends texts. Kelley deletes each one, refusing to even listen, to even open it. Hope calls again. Kelley ignores. Again and again. Eventually, the calls stop coming._

_They operate decently as a team, although the fluidity of their communication is interrupted, broken, and neither of them seem willing to put in the time to repair it. Ali comes back and Julie gets called up and Kling begins to see more minutes, and the next thing Kelley knows she’s riding the bench into 2015, into the World Cup._

_It’s a January night, after a particularly grueling practice that left Kelley disappointed and regretful and utterly hopeless, that she finds herself sitting alone in the locker room across from Hope. She looks up and meets those eyes, gentle, worried, and the past becomes the present and for a second Kelley remembers who she was in 2012, how she would’ve told Hope every single concern she had and listened to the keeper as she quieted her fears and lifted her confidence._

_And then Kelley fucking loses it._

_“What the actual fuck are you looking at?” Kelley stands up, slamming her locker shut and taking the five steps necessary to close the distance between the two of them. “You want to fucking laugh? Because you fucking get to keep your starting position and I’m on the bench? Do you want to laugh at the fact that I’m nothing without you? Because go ahead, you can laugh, it’s fucking hilarious, right?”_

_Hope is looking up at her and she looks wholly broken, her eyes wide and vulnerable in a way she’s rarely seen them, blue and deep and helpless to stop whatever Kelley is going to do._

_“Kelley, I’m not laughing—“ Kelley cuts her off before she can get anything more out._

_“Shut the fuck up!” She takes another step forward, and now she's towering over Hope, standing practically between her legs, her eyes wild. “You’ve gotten to decide everything, you do all the picking and choosing and you leave my fucking life and you wreck me and I am so fucking sick of it. I am so fucking done with being second best. I am done.”_

_“Kelley.” Hope can’t seem to find anything more to say, but her eyes are pleading, her mouth trembling and Kelley sees for just a second, just a fleeting second that Hope might be just as broken as she is._

_Then she’s kissing Hope. It’s not a gentle kiss, it’s almost violent, shoving her against the cold metal of the lockers, straddling her hips and digging her fingernails into her sides. Hope is holding her, pulling her closer with something close to desperation, as if she hasn’t been held or touched in years. And then Kelley is standing again, wiping her mouth, refusing to look at Hope, grabbing her bag and stalking out of the room and Hope leans against the locker, eyes closed, breath unsteady._

_That night, the last night of camp, Kelley wordlessly kicks Press out of Hope’s room. She walks in, closes the door, and looks at Hope. Her eyes are burning, and Hope can’t read her expression, can’t tell if this is lust or hate or some combination of the two._

_They kiss and it hurts. They fuck and it hurts even more. In the morning, Kelley is the one who leaves early, before Hope is even close to waking up. She wakes up to a cold bed and lays on her back for minutes, squeezing her eyes shut, until her strength gives out and she begins to shake from the tears. Christen comes back to find her like this, half-clothed, trembling and sobbing, and for the first time a teammate softens towards Hope, sees the brokenness in the keeper that shadows Kelley’s pain._

_It’s the first time she cheats on Jerramy. It’s also the last. She returns to Washington. A week later, she moves out. It’s an amicable divorce, if that’s possible. She admits that she’s cheated, and all he does is nod._

_“You’ve been in love with her since I proposed,” he says, and he shrugs slightly. Even this can’t reach him. It’s as if they never loved each other. “It’s okay.”_

_Her new apartment is open and bright, with windows on all sides and barely any furniture. She fills it slowly, and she begins to fill in her own life again. There are things that keep her going — her new team, for one — and she tries to fill her life with the things that used to make her happy, with the things that made her the type of woman Kelley could fall in love with._

_They’re called up to camp again. Kelley actively avoids Hope. This time, Hope seeks her out. Alex and Tobin act like guards, never letting her be alone. Christen shoots her a sympathetic glance here and there, but there’s nothing more to be done._

_Eventually, Hope does what she must. She knocks on Kelley’s door at night, after a practice that left her particularly sore. Morgan opens the door and her eyes go wide, stumbling back slightly. Behind her, Hope can see JJ and Kelley and a handful of other players sprawled on the floor._

_“Hey Hope.” Morgan glances over her shoulder. Kelley’s head jerks up, but she doesn’t turn around. “You okay?”_

_“Yeah, I’ve got to talk to Kelley really fast,” Hope says. The whole room goes silent. Now, Kelley turns, leveling her gaze at Hope. Her face is completely unreadable, and Hope fidgets nervously. Alex is already shaking her head, leaning over to tell Kelley to stay put, but the defender stands._

_“She’s not going to leave me alone,” she hears Kelley mutter, and it hurts, but Hope squares her shoulders, trying to keep it from hurting. She walks to the doorway, looks Hope up and down, then jerks her head down the hall. They walk in silence to the stairwell, where Kelley climbs two steps, turns around and sits down._

_“What the fuck could you possibly want to say to me?” Kelley’s voice is harsh, and Hope gets it, she understands, but God it hits her hard. She stammers for a second, twisting her fingers, and that’s when she sees Kelley notice the emptiness on her left ring finger, sees the realization ripple through her body._

_“I left him,” Hope says quietly. “The divorce was finalized a week after the last camp.”_

_Kelley nods. Her teeth are clenched. She’s not giving way._

_“I’m sorry,” Kelley says. Hope shrugs, and Kelley laughs slightly, an edge to her voice. “I’m not going to, like, sit here and make you feel better though. Go talk to Carli if you need that."_

_“I left because of you,” Hope says, and when Kelley tries to talk, defensiveness already flooding her features, Hope holds up a hand and keeps talking, because she has to keep talking or she’ll never get through this again. “And I don’t care. I never really loved him, I wasn’t in love with him. Not like you. Not like I loved you.”_

_Hope takes a breath, uneven as it is, and continues, watching Kelley narrow her eyes, watching her try to steady her hands as they shake._

_“I know this is years late—“_

_“Years late?” Kelley stands now, and the rage from the locker room is back. “You shouldn’t have to fucking say this at all. I loved you. I loved you so fucking much and you knew that and you left. You married him. You never had to leave anyone for me. I never made you make that choice.”_

_“I know!” Hope raises her voice now, her shout filled with desperation, and Kelley clenches a fist as if ready for this, as if she’s been waiting for this fight. “Do you think I don’t fucking know that? I fucked up Kelley. I was a coward and I ran and ran and ran but I can’t get away from you. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t fucking stop. I can’t stop loving you.”_

_“You love me?” Kelley is laughing now, a manic sound, and she looks at the ceiling, hands on her head. “You don’t fuck know me Hope."_

_“I love you,” Hope shouts. "I know we both feel the same way, okay, and I—"_

_"You don’t know a damn thing about me, Hope.” Kelley’s voice is low and dangerous and Hope feels hopeless._

_“I want to try again, Kelley.” She lowers her voice, tries to make it gentle, tries to make Kelley hear her, but she’s too shut out. “Please. I want to try again.”_

_Silence fills the stairwell. Kelley looks at Hope, her eyes wide. She drops her arms to her side, looking at Hope, and her eyes are softening and the anger is subsiding into pain and for a moment Hope wonders what this could mean. And then she knows. She knows before Kelley even opens her mouth again. Kelley is about to break her._

_“I’m seeing someone, Hope.” Kelley takes a step forward and her fingers wind their way around Hope’s wrist. It’s the first time they’ve touched since last camp, and Hope closes her eyes, relishing in the contact as she simultaneously bites back tears. “I like her a lot.”_

_Hope opens her eyes, blinking, lowering her gaze._

_“Of course you are.” She smiles, shaking her head, because God how could she be so stupid, how could she think Kelley would wait all this time, that someone else wouldn’t fall in love with that smile and that stupid sense of humor, how could she be so stupid? “I’m glad. I’m happy for you.”_

_“No you’re not.” Kelley tugs lightly at her arm, and Hope looks at her, notices the anger continuing to weaken, the pain continuing to grow. “I don’t love her.”_

_“I’m glad,” Hope says, so quickly she can’t even regret it, and Kelley smiles slightly, just a little turn of the corner of her mouth. “I mean, I’m not glad, I’m just—“_

_“I get it.” They are silent for a moment. Kelley takes a deep breath, a breath she might regret, then continues. “I don’t know if I’m going to love her or not, but I have to see. I have to. But if you want to wait—“ another deep breath “—if you want to wait, if you want to fix this, that’s okay, too.”_

_Hope can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. Kelley is letting her back in and she can’t keep her balance. She looks at Kelley, who is refusing to make eye contact, whose shoulders seem limp and whose breathing is sparse and shallow._

_“Friends?” Kelley raises her eyes slowly, gently, and she sees the regret and the pain, she sees the desperation in Hope’s eyes. She sees how badly she needs this._

_“Friends.” Hope nods, doing her best to restrain a smile. Kelley stands to leave, and Hope catches her wrist quickly._

_“I’ll wait.” Kelley looks back. She says nothing. She walks out, leaving Hope alone in the stairwell. She stands for a moment, staring at the wall, and then she’s sinking to the floor, sobbing, and she’s not sure if she’s happy or sad, she’s not even sure what she’s feeling, but God she’s finally feeling something again and it feels like she’s coming back to life._

***

Becky was the one who knocked on Carli’s door. When it opened, Carli leveled a look at Hope, but Becky shook her head. 

"Where’s Kelley?” she asked, and Carli jerked her head at the bathroom. Becky nodded. “Alright, clear out. Give Hope a chance to explain herself.”

HAO and Carli walked by without a word. They didn’t want to jump to conclusions, they wanted to believe the best, but God it was hard. After all this time it was so hard. But they stayed quiet, and this silence was the most they could give to Hope in this moment. She walked into the room, glancing back once at Becky as the door slid shut, and then knocked on the bathroom door.

“Kell?” Her voice sounded so weak to herself, but she didn’t care. She wanted to be weak. She didn’t want to be strong. Kelley made her weak and she was sick of fighting that. “It’s me. Can we talk?”

There was silence. She leaned against the door, and she could hear sniffling, the softest sound of muffled tears.

“I’m so sorry, Kell.” Hope sank to the ground, resting her head on the door. “I’m not going anywhere. Please, let me explain.”

There was silence from the other side of the door. Hope closed her eyes, crossed her legs.

“I’ll wait.” Her voice was soft. On the other side of the door, Kelley sat against the wall, one fist clenched and pressed to the door, her legs shaking against the cold tile of the floor. She cried silently now, tired of Hope being a witness to her pain.

On the other side of the door, Hope waited. She was tired of being the one to run. Tonight, she would stay.


	3. Wait For It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this would only be a few chapters but it'll probably go longer. I sat down expecting to do a little one-shot and now we're 17,000 words in lol so we'll see how this goes.

On the other side of the door, Kelley pressed her hands into her face.

This was how she always felt. When she was with Hope — well, she was never with Hope, not really — this was how she felt whenever the keeper sank into herself. On the other side, shut out, lost, lonely, begging to be let in, begging for a moment, a glimpse, a second of understanding.

Now she understood. Finally, she understood. What it meant to feel this way, to crave the strength to let someone in, to long to be held, yet to be too afraid, too guarded, to just open the door. She understood Hope more deeply, more intimately, in this moment than she had ever understood before.

She could hear Hope breathing through the door, and she imagined the way she would sit, messing with her hands, bouncing one leg, mouth opening and shutting as she tried to find the right words, that perfectionist mind of hers refusing to let any words out because none of them were right, none of them were good enough. Hope wouldn’t say anything. Kelley knew that.

“Remember those stupid outfits they made us wear to the opening ceremony in London?”

Surprise. Kelley jerked upwards at the words. Of course Hope would talk now. Of course, this wasn’t the closed off Hope she was dealing with, this was the new and improved Hope, the one carefully cultivated by over a year of five therapy sessions a week and cautious contact that grew into fondness that grew into friendship between the keeper and her team. 

“Yeah.” Her voice was a light croak. She doubted Hope heard her, but even if she didn’t, she continued onward bravely.

“I felt so embarrassed in that.” Hope’s laugh is soft. “I didn’t want you to see me looking that stupid, even though you were wearing the same thing. I just kept thinking ‘God there’s no way I can go out in public like this.’ And then you busted out of the bathroom in the same thing and you were so jazzed, you were so excited, and that made me think that I might just have fun that night.”

There’s that laugh again, and Kelley melted into the sound.

“I laughed so hard those Olympics.” A pause. “I laugh so hard whenever I’m with you, Kell. Every time I think back over the past few years of my life, the happiest moments have you in them, in the corners and in the forefront and everywhere else. You’re my favorite memory, Kelley.”

On the other side of the door, Kelley leaned her head back, squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears to go away.

***

_They are lying on their backs in the Portuguese sand. The night has left their surroundings inky, difficult to decipher. Kelley lets her eyes flutter close. Hope keeps them open, finding sanctuary in the black outline of the defender’s face._

_Around them, the sound of waves crashing into the shore almost drowns out the quiet chatter of their teammates. This was Christen’s idea, to come down to the beach at night and watch the stars. She said it was a way to relax, to get out of their heads, so a small group left an hour after dinner with blankets tucked under their arms._

_As they made their way down the hall, Tobin had been the one to stop to knock at Hope’s door. Alex shot her a look — of all their friends, she was slowest to forgive — but Tobin just shrugged._

_“Ashlyn’s rooming with her,” she said, as if that was the only reason she smiled widely at Hope two seconds later, asking if she wanted to go to the beach. Hope looked at Tobin, then at Alex and Christen, before letting her eyes settle on Kelley for a moment._

_“I’d love to.” She grabbed a towel and told Ashlyn where they were going, and the group made their way to the water in near-silence. All of them were tired, but the good type of tired, the sort of tired that filled their limbs with an anxiety to rest and a hunger to be active at the same time. They were restless and exhausted, sick of hotel rooms yet dreading practice, understanding that they needed to rest but also itching to get back onto the field, into a new game, ball at their feet._

_The beach is empty when they reach it, clambering carefully down rocks to reach a tucked-away cove of white sand. Ashlyn lets out a holler and sprints into the water, laughing as it douses her up to her ankles._

_Hope walks silently, a few steps behind the rest of her teammates. She wishes she felt the ease the rest of them seem to feel, wishes she could close that space and drop into conversation effortlessly, make one of them smile, make all of them laugh. But she knows she can’t, knows the words won’t come easily, so she stays behind._

_After a few moments and a pointed elbow from Christen, Kelley drops back from her friends and matches pace with Hope. They don’t speak as they walk, wordlessly pausing when they reach the sand, Kelley stooping to take off her sandals and Hope mirroring her, watching her. But when Alex leads Christen and Tobin towards the left, Kelley touches Hope’s hip, nudging her to the right._

_She spreads a blanket and when Hope does the same — leaving almost a foot of space between them — she can feel Kelley’s smile. The defender reaches down, tugging her blanket several inches to the side, then drops onto the ground with a satisfied sigh, reclining, hands behind her head._

_“Come on.” Kelley pats the blanket next to her, and Hope deposits herself onto the ground._

_They let the quiet remain unbroken for minutes, long minutes that Hope spends focused on her breathing, on keeping her chest rising and falling in calm, unbroken intervals. This is supposed to be relaxing, but lying to close to Kelley, after years of being pushed away, has every hair in her body standing on end, every fiber of her being tense, trembling._

_“There’s not that many stars here.” Hope turns her head, the sound of Kelley’s voice foreign when it’s this soft, this gentle. She’d forgotten what that sounded like._

_“Really?” Hope looks back at the sky. It’s a blanket of glimmering pinpricks of light, but she can hardly drag her eyes away from Kelley’s face, despite barely being able to see a single feature._

_“Yeah.” Kelley shifts, dropping her left arm by her side, and Hope tries not to measure the distance between their arms, separated only by inches. “Back home, we’d go out driving and we’d get a few hours into the country and watch the stars. Out there, they’re so bright, it feels like the sky is flooding with them. At the start of August there’s a meteor shower, and we’d always go and watch it. It was beautiful.”_

_Hope nods._

_“The Perseids.” Kelley turns and looks at Hope. “That’s what they’re called. I’d go up in the mountains and watch them when I was little.”_

_She can sense that smile again, even as Kelley turns her head back towards the stars. Is she smiling at the thought of both of them, sprawled on their backs, eyes glowing in the light of the same falling stars on the same jet black sky, thousands of miles apart, years before they knew each other, loved each other, broke each other?_

_“Of course you know that.” There is silence for a moment, and Hope counts each breath that Kelley takes. One, two, three. “I miss that.”_

_“What?” Hope’s voice is too high pitched, too eager. She doesn’t care. She counts those breaths again as the silence between them swells._

_One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two—_

_“You.” And then there’s movement, so quick and subtle, and then Kelley’s fingers are tracing across Hope’s palm, winding their hands together. “I miss you.”_

_She can’t think of anything to say. The words aren’t easy anymore. She closes her eyes instead, tightening her grip around Kelley’s fingers, praying the girl won’t let go._

_She doesn’t._

_They lay side by side for minutes, and Hope counts Kelley’s breaths to pass time, to steel her courage._

_“I miss you so much, Kell.” Her voice is so soft and shaky that’s she’s sure the waves obscure the sound. But Kelley squeezes her hand, gently._

_“I know."_

***

Hope barely paused. She talked and talked and talked, and when she stopped talking for brief moments Kelley could hear her breathing. She talked longer and she talked louder, and her desperation mounted slowly, and Kelley felt worse and worse the longer she stayed quiet.

Finally, Hope ran out of words, ran out of memories she wanted to relive. The silence felt heavier than the speech.

“Kelley, please open the door.” Hope’s voice was like her breathing, heavy, heaving. “You’re lying to yourself if you think I don’t love you.”

***

_She’s not single. She’s not Hope’s. And God, she does everything she can to make that painfully clear. Each post on Instagram, each happy little Tweet, digs into Hope’s ribs. But she waits. She reminds herself that Kelley doesn’t love this woman, that she might never love her. She tries to convince herself that Kelley wouldn’t lead her on, that Kelley wouldn’t hurt her._

_But it does hurt. Even if Kelley isn’t trying, it does hurt._

_The World Cup comes and every second of it is filled to the edges with Kelley._

_They’re back to walking a tightrope, hugging before games and seeking out each other’s presence after games. There are long practices where a single glance, a single grin from Kelley is enough to keep her moving for hours. There are late nights lying side by side on the floor of hotel rooms, looking at the ceiling and talking about their dreams._

_And yes, they spend most of their time together in groups, Hope finding her way back into her teammates' lives, earning back Becky’s trust and Ali’s laugh, finding a friendship that is fresh and new in Morgan and JJ. And no, they never kiss, but on occasion their hands find each other, at times they fall asleep curled into each other, at times Kelley feels more at home looking at Hope across a lunch table and a half hearted game of cards than she feels when her own girlfriend is holding her at night._

_It’s a balancing act. Hope meets the girl, tries and fails not to hate the way she fits snugly into Kelley’s side, tries and fails to make a good impression. She can tell from the first second they meet, the first words that the girls spits out, that this will not be a friendship, that she is a threat, that Kelley hasn’t succeeded in hiding their connection._

_The girl is everywhere in Canada, in the hotel after games, ready to hug Kelley from the stands after each win. But she’s not there in the morning to see Kelley stiff from practice and bleary from lack of caffeine. It’s not her job to keep Kelley laughing through ice baths and to lead her on long recovery walks around Vancouver. It’s not her place to sit next to Kelley in a room packed with players with the clock nearing midnight, each of them speaking in hushed voices about what they hope will come next._

_And she’s not on the pitch. That’s the one thing the girl can’t take from her. The pitch is hers, and hers alone. She keeps a deathly grip upon this one place, this one sanctuary, where Kelley is all hers._

_It’s on the pitch that she sees Kelley learn how to fly. She sees her run into the box and she knows, she knows. When the ball hits the netting, it’s all she can do to stay in this half of the field, leaping up and down, shouting her support. She tries to catch Kelley’s eye, but she fails. There’s too much excitement, too much energy, and the clock winds down oh-so-fast as if it’s pumped through with adrenaline._

_After the game, Kelley finds Hope and then she has a chance, then she scoops her up and does all she can to keep herself from crushing the defender’s ribs with her hug. Kelley’s face is pressed into Hope’s shoulder and her hands are loving and possessive against Hope’s skin, and her breath hitches when she feels one hand run along her throat, the thumb tracing from one side of her jaw to the other as Kelley drags herself away._

_This is hers. Here, Kelley is hers. Everywhere else, it’s a balancing act, but on the pitch they fall into each other, again and again._

_They win, and Hope keeps losing and finding and losing Kelley in the crowd, a fog of champagne and a crowd of friends and family making it impossible to grasp her for too long. A medal is hung around Hope’s neck and a new sense of belonging is draped around her shoulders, yet all she wants is a quiet room, a quiet bed and Kelley’s arms._

_The girl hangs off of Kelley all night, overly boastful of her World Cup champion girlfriend, Hope is sure. She hangs all over Kelley, yet it’s Hope’s door that Kelley knocks on that night. Hope lets her in because she doesn’t know how to do anything else. The door slams shut and they fall together again._

_The next morning is a blur of muttering apologies and rushing to tug on clothes. They forget, although they don’t forgive. They move on, but the pain and joy and everything remains, lodged in their ribcages, waiting for the day when it will be forced to break free._

***

She opened the door. It took almost half an hour, but Kelley opened the door, standing and pulling at the knob too quickly, her muscles aching. When she opened the door, she saw Hope sitting crosslegged, eyes soft as she gazed up at Kelley, completely vulnerable, completely exposed.

“Hey.” Hope’s voice is gentle. There’s no anger, no frustration. She waited. Hope, who used to wait for no one, smiles at her, and the smile is patient, and it fills Kelley’s heart just a little.

“Hi.” Kelley sinks to the floor next to her keeper, and she lets herself be pulled closer, lets Hope wrap her arms around her shoulders and press their bodies together, and for now that is just enough.

***

_Kelley tosses her entire hand of cards into Hope’s face, cursing._

_“You suck!” she yelps, but Hope just grins. She glances over at Kelley, whose arms are crossed, face pulled into a scowl._

_“Don’t be a poor sport, kid,” Hope says. “Not everyone can be as skilled as me.”_

_But Kelley keeps the sour face on, curling herself into a ball and then toppling over backwards. HAO and Morgan laugh, Christen reaches a foot out to poke Kelley in the ribs as Hope nudges her and tries to apologize, over dramatically begging forgiveness._

_“Oh, come on, what do I have to do?” Hope asks, laughing, and the girls in the circle are laughing too, trying to restrain it but unable to keep their amusement hidden. “Hold a boombox over my head? Here—“_

_She scrambles onto her knees, grabs the speakers and holds them over her head, singing loudly in an off-pitch alto voice that has Tobin rolled onto one side in laughter. The speakers are still blasting a song from Hamilton to abet Alex’s most recent obsession, and Hope sings along, one hand holding the speakers and the other pointing at Kelley._

_“I am so into you, I am so into you.” Hope drags the final vowel out, dancing as JJ raps the next verse and Kelley just shakes her head, finally laughing along._

_See, the trick of winning Kelley back isn't just finding a way to get her to trust Hope again. It's a trick of getting every single member of the team to see the good in Hope again. And part of that means opening up. Part of that means playing card games with Tobin and taking part in every team bonding activity, putting down her book and instead watching Netflix with Kling and Morgan, going out to coffee with Ashlyn and Ali and not minding when Crystal or Christen tagged along. It means late-night food fights and random pranks on Becky and scooping up Christie to sing her a happy birthday song._

_It means being completely, utterly stupid. It means being happy._

***

“I am retiring,” Hope said, slow and steady. “And I am not leaving you. Okay?”

Kelley sucked her breath in, pressing her face into Hope’s sweatshirt.

“I’m sorry.” Her words were muffled. “I fucked up, didn’t I?”

“Not at all.” Hope pressed a kiss into her hair, another to her cheek, and Kelley turned her face and kissed Hope on the mouth, gentle but firm, fingers of her right hand brushing her jawline.

“Want to hear what I was going to say?” Kelley nodded, feeling stupid and safe all at the same time, burying herself in Hope.

This was the side of Hope that no one else knew, that Kelley didn’t want anyone else to know. Everything about her was so pointed, so calculate when she dealt with anything else in the outside world. She hugged her teammates, slung her arm around their shoulders, but it was alway an athletic motion, defined by the way her muscles flexed, never quite relaxing. 

But the second she touched Kelley she turned soft, eyes closing, hands moving to hold on as gently as possible. She stroked Kelley’s hair, ran her thumb across her jaw and her wrist and her ribs as if she was delicate. Perhaps it was because she had broken her before, perhaps it was because she alone knew how truly fragile Kelley had become. Yet it was comforting, every time. She loved feeling delicate, if only because of the way it softened each of Hope’s edges.

“First, I’m not sure when I want to retire,” Hope said. “If we don’t get this Olympic gold—“

“We will.” Kelley’s voice was firm and Hope laughed.

“If we don’t, it will be hard to leave.” Hope pressed another kiss into Kelley’s hair. “So maybe another World Cup, maybe another Olympics. Maybe, if I stay healthy enough. Or not. It just depends. But I’ll stay on the Reign as long as I can, to drag that decision out because God knows I won’t want to leave.”

“None of us will want you to leave.” Kelley nudged her side. “We won’t let you do it. You’re still too good.”

Hope smiled slightly. Kelley could feel it against her head, and it made her smile, too. They were always like this, mirrors towards one another, reflecting off each other, their emotions always a perfect match. It had always been like this, even when they hadn’t wanted it to be.

“Kell, I have no desire to go out like Abby did.” She looked down at Kelley, who was buried into her side. “I don’t want to go out struggling to keep up. I want to be the best, no controversy, when I hang up my gloves.”

“You will be.” Kelley looked up at her. “But you’ll be the best for a lot longer.”

And there she was, always believing in Hope, believing in her more than was practical, more than was reasonable, more than was probable or possible.

***

_So what are they? Kelley with her girlfriend, and Hope with the fading tan line on her ring finger? They don’t answer that question. They ignore it, shove it away, because there’s a trophy and a series of games and too many interviews, too many press conferences, too many formal events and red carpets and conversations with the President to honestly worry about what this is._

_Kelley can say what it is to her. It’s comfortable, the ability to melt into a hug in half a second after not seeing one another for half a month. It’s casual conversations turning into frantic texting. It’s ignoring whoever she’s with to settle a bet over who has the better taste in music. It’s a quick squeeze on her knee, a quick kiss in the dark, a soft touch to the base of her spine as Hope walks by. It’s a best friend, a confidant, a love that is soft and gentle and building and biding its time._

_For Hope, of course, it’s different. It’s forced patience. It’s understanding, calm understanding that takes more effort than she ever cares to show. It’s holding back, limiting herself to one kiss here or there, limiting herself to only seconds of reminiscing before focusing on all the good in front of her. Dear God her life is good, her life is great, her life is flawless, and she is truly, fully thankful. Yet when she think of Kelley her hands go limp and her heart goes warm and she feels as if she’s ballooning, filling up too fast, something that would be beautiful if it wasn’t so damn frightening._

_And so what if it’s cheating? So what if it’s wrong? This love doesn’t discriminate. It just asks them to keep giving, to keep trying, to keep smiling, to keep looking at each other too long and looking away too quickly, to keep stealing away and stealing time and stealing love in increasingly larger increments._

_They are in love and their team knows it. They are in love and their family, their friends know it. They’re in love and they know it. And they do nothing._

_They wait._

***

“You’re more to me than soccer.” Hope said it softly, and she could tell by the way Kelley stayed still that she wasn’t sure what she meant, uncertain if she was interpreting Hope’s meaning correctly. “I care about you so much more than soccer. So much more. And when soccer is gone, I want you to stay.”

Kelley sat up slightly, craning her neck to look up into her eyes.

“Hope—“

“Laura talked to Sky Blue,” Hope cut her off. “They’re willing to trade Kim for you.”

She didn’t look at Kelley, but she could feel her eyes on her. She kept her eyes on the wall in front of her. She wanted to hear it before she saw it — the shock, the confusion, the rejection if it came.

After all, what were they now? Close friends who ended up tangled together in bed every time they were in the same time zone? Hope had waited, she had waited for a year and a half, and she would wait for longer, but God she wanted to know, at some point she wanted to know what Kelley wanted. She didn’t want Hope to leave, she knew that much. But did she really want Hope, want her fully, want their future the way Hope did?

This was all Hope could think of any more. Being on the pitch cleared her mind, eyes fixed on the ball, on her backline, voice raised over the chants of a crowd or the shouts of the coaching staff. But the second she stepped off the pitch, the very moment she peeled off her gloves, Kelley consumed her mind again. 

After Reign practices, she shot off texts quickly, sometimes waiting hours for responses but always lighting up at Kelley’s name on her phone. Before Kelley's games, she always called, left a voicemail. Kelley would call back much later, sleepy, sometimes drunk, and they would talk shop — because of course Hope watched, she always watched — before their conversation wandered elsewhere, to their lives, the coffee they were drinking and the books they were reading. When the team came together for camps, Hope sought out Kelley first, even if she was shy at first, even if it just meant sitting next to each other over dinner and joining separate conversations all night. 

She was all in. Entirely, completely, wholly. She had become Kelley’s, nothing else, no one else mattering.

All she wanted anymore was Kelley. But she knew the younger girl’s life was so much more, so much more than them, than the scarce moments they shared together. What if, after all this, after Hope took years to realize she needed Kelley, what if Kelley no longer wanted her at all?

***

_Kelley crosses her legs, digging her toes into the Hawaii sand._

_“So you broke up with her?"_

_Over a year since Hope left her life behind, and here she is, still sitting firmly at her side, quietly refusing to leave, patiently fulfilling her promise to wait. She wraps her arms around her knees, pulling them closer to her torso, and watches Kelley’s face brazenly, not trying to hide her eagerness. She’s years older, but in this moment, Hope seems young, like a school kid who delivered a valentine to her crush and is waiting for a response._

_“Yes.” Kelley presses one finger into the sand. “I broke up with her.”_

_Hope nods. She sits. She waits._

_“What happened?” she asks, finally, as Kelley builds a small mound of sand, burrowing into it with one finger to make a tunnel. At the question, Kelley jerks her eyes up to meet Hope’s, and there’s a level of amusement, tinged with grief, tinged with perhaps even anger, filling her face._

_“What do you think happened?” She turns back to the sand. “You. You happened. I couldn’t love her. Everything made me think of you. Everything she did, everything she didn’t do. It wasn’t enough and she knew it and I knew it.”_

_They remain silent again, just for a few moments._

_“She saw us together a few too many times.” Hope clenches her jaw, nods, and Kelley shrugs. “She saw, I guess. Said I looked at you like you hung the stars and the moon. She told me I had to choose.”_

_The sea is blue and Hope lets herself get lost in it for a moment, tracking the waves as they break, foaming, crashing into one another, each wave so short lived, replaced so quickly. It’s beautiful. She doesn’t want to leave. She doesn’t want to turn her face and ask the questions she has to ask. She doesn’t want to take this risk._

_But she does._

_“So this is you choosing?” There’s a moment, when Kelley shakes her head, that Hope sees it all flash — the last year, the last four years, every touch, every kiss, every single fucking second — and it’s so damn melodramatic that she wants to kick herself._

_“I can’t live without you, Hope.” Kelley’s voice stays low and steady. “You’re my keeper. You’re my friend. I don’t want a life without you, and I don’t want a woman who can’t respect that. I can’t love a woman who can’t respect that.”_

_“But you don’t want me either.” It’s not a question. After all this time, Hope is well aware that it might be time, time to let go, to let herself love from afar, to stop asking so damn much from the woman she broke years ago._

_She loses herself in these thoughts, loses her sight in the sea, so she doesn’t feel it at first when Kelley shifts closer to her. Then she’s leaning her head on her shoulder, wrapping her fingers around Hope’s bicep, and suddenly she’s cold, she’s shivering, she’s afraid to move a muscle._

_“I do,” Kelley whispers. “Just give me time to be alone. Just a little.”_

_In the end, ‘a little’ means two nights. Their game is cancelled and Kelley ends up in Hope’s room, both of them angry, each of them on one of the double beds, sitting across from each other, fuming. They’re angry, and their anger feeds off of one another, as they rehash the situation again and again, furious because they deserve more, because they deserve better, because things aren’t changing._

_“Well, at least we got a paid vacation,” Kelley jokes, although the smile is something of a sneer. “A few days in Hawaii with you aren’t something I would ever turn down.”_

_The words are out before she can stop them, and then Hope is staring at her shoes to avoid Kelley’s eyes. And then Kelley is moving forward too quickly, she’s straddling Hope and kissing her at the same time, knees on either side of Hope’s hips, pinning her back to the bed, moaning into her mouth and cursing as they fall back into old patterns and old rhythms._

_They undress too hastily and kiss too harshly, and then she’s kneeling on the side of the bed, a hand pressing Hope’s hips down, and she makes the mistake of looking up. She meets eyes slitted with lust but also thick with distrust. She meets eyes that look uncertain, even as Hope's back is arching and her mouth is sounding out syllables of want, even as she reaches down and catches Kelley’s hair between her fingers, urging her to close the gap, to give them both what they want._

_“Hope.” And then she’s back on the bed, she’s holding Hope’s face in both hands. “Hope, I love you.”_

_She just nods back at first, and Kelley sees her struggling, and this time she’s the one who waits, who waits for the words that have always been slow to come to Hope’s lips._

_“I love you so much.” The words tumble out and their worlds tumble together, and then they’re kissing and then Kelley is back on her knees, both hands holding Hope’s hips down, and it doesn’t take long for them to remember how to forget, how to forgive, how to love and make love as if it’s the first time._

_They go weeks, then months without definition. They’re called up to camp and spend more time outside their hotel rooms than in them, exploring cities, eating brunch with their teammates, brushing hands under the table. After each game, once rested legs and full nights of sleep are no longer a concern, they share hotel rooms and hotel beds and everything that comes with it._

_The team knows, and the team cares, but for the first time the team accepts. They watch. They listen. They see Kelley laughing again, see her smile returning in full. They see the way she and Hope work in the backline, the way Kelley’s aggression returns ten-fold, the way it’s built since the World Cup and the way it overflows now, happiness and athletic drive all mixed up and turning her into a better player, a better person._

_She’s the second to breakfast each morning, sitting with Naeher, two cups of coffee fixed, a spot saved for Hope. And every morning, Hope sits beside her, touches her arm, mentions something she saw in the news and teases Kelley for the way her hair flies in every direction. She’s better than she was before — happiness suits her, fits her like a glove, fills her up and lets her exist in the way she's truly supposed to be._

_They leave camp, and they find comfort in daily connections, in small moments. They text every waking second. They FaceTime in the morning as they’re waking up and late at night when they can’t fall asleep. In the locker rooms before Sky Blue games, Kelley sees Hope’s name on her screen and answers every time, smile spreading, and her teammates pretend to look away, even though they’re listening, fascinated and amazed at the conversations they hear, trying their best to wrap their heads around the concept of Hope fucking Solo fitting into the other side of this banter._

_Chicago comes, and the Olympics are looming, and Hope is going through boxes in her apartment an hour before her flight, trying to find a set of old pictures that Ali had reminded her of the last time they had spoken on the phone. She pulls out a small box marked “Olympics” and begins rifling through, pulling out a few envelopes, three hotel keycards and then stopping, blinking, at a small bracelet at the bottom of the box._

_Hope pauses. She picks it up, gently touching the familiar material, worn slightly, then pockets it. An hour later she’s on a cab, then in the air, and then she’s landing in Chicago and she’s only hours away from Kelley. It’s almost a full day until they’re alone again, and the moment they find a pocket of quiet Hope’s hand is in her pocket, digging out the bracelet._

_“This is from London,” she murmurs, and Kelley lightly runs her fingertips across the bracelet. “From 2012. I was going to give it to you then, and never had the courage. It’s for luck, now, for your next Olympics.”_

_“Hope.” There’s so much she wants to say. She wants to say that the roster isn’t set, that she shouldn’t be so sure of her, even though Hope has always, always believed in her more than she could believe in herself. She wants to tell her every ounce of cheesy romantic bullshit that has ever flooded her brain, that she fell in love with her the first time she saw her, that she feels as if she spent her whole life stumbling towards Hope, that this had to be fated. She wants to tell her that she wants a lifetime of moments like this, small and tender and fragile and gorgeous._

_But she can’t speak and she’s doing well to be breathing, so instead she slips it onto her left wrist and presses her hand to Hope’s knee, a wordless thank you._

_She wears the bracelet nonstop. When their next game comes, she covers it in tape, careful that it isn’t damaged. She wants to carry this part of Hope, this little sentiment left over from London. Rio is coming, and if they couldn’t make it four years ago, perhaps they can make it now, this year, this time._

***

“Hey.” Hope finally turned her head slightly, and Kelley took it as an opportunity to kiss her fully on the mouth again, hands guiding her face to turn even further, then slipping down to her waist. She pulled away and pressed a kiss immediately to Hope’s forehead, and the keeper felt herself relax. “How soon can they get my kit made?”

She laughed at that, a real laugh, a loud one.

“As soon as you can move into my spare room,” she murmured, kissing Kelley again, and she felt that signature smirk against her lips.

“If you think I’m not sharing a bed with you, then you’re out of your goddamn mind.” They both laughed, laughed into the kiss and then into another and another, still sprawled on the floor, too wrapped up in one another to feel discomfort, too busy piecing each other back together to mind that their legs were going numb, their back would soon being to ache from being arched too much, too happy to notice any other emotion.

Waiting was worth it.


	4. Yesterday's Mistake

There were many nights when Hope couldn’t sleep. The first night in her apartment alone, she stared at the ceiling for an hour, then two, before finally taking the dogs for a run that lasted another hour. When she returned home, the emptiness crept in. She showered, changed and tried to sleep again. She couldn’t. She stayed in bed until the hint of sunlight began to creep through her window, forcing her to give up.

That night, Hope couldn’t sleep. Kelley clung to her in bed, arms around her waist and face in her throat, but Hope stayed awake, eyes fixed above her, her fingers working their way through the smaller woman’s hair, soothing and gentle. She wanted to remain in this moment. She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to remember.

Whenever Hope couldn’t sleep, she thought about Kelley. She thought about Kelley before all of this, before she became a defender, before their lives became intertwined. She thought back on every single interaction, however small, they had, every baby step they took before leaping head-on into this.

Part of her felt tortured as she thought back to a version of Kelley that was so unbroken, so whole. She remembered the first days of Kelley’s first call up, the smile that caught her and the jokes that kept her, the way the whole team became so entirely enamored with her within minutes. She couldn’t forget this version of Kelley, and part of her felt that she had warped it, that she destroyed that youthful joy every time she shut her out, ignored her, broke her.

But something about the simplicity, the honesty of their interactions from that time before everything else made Hope feel at home. As if even then, they had been meant for this, meant to fall together again and again until it all made sense. Because from the very first second — and she’d always remember this, even if she would never say it — from the first second Kelley felt like home.

***

_“So I’m Kelley.”_

_Hope looks up from her seat in the locker room, her eyes tracing their way up a pair of cleats and socks drenched in mud to an equally filthy practice kit to a pair of warm eyes that crinkle at the edges with a smile. A hand is stuck out towards her, and Hope takes it, smirking only slightly at the overly formal gesture._

_“I know who you are, O’Hara.” She drops Kelley’s hand and gives her a quick nod of recognition. “Good practice today, you gave my hands a good beating."_

_“Oh, I was going easy on you.” Hope is surprised at how quickly she laughs at that, looking at the diminutive striker standing over her, the way she bounces her heels up and down, cleats tapping out a steady beat against the floor. She cocks her head, sizing up Kelley, remembering the way she had streaked across the field, a ball of energy, adding a certain breath of fresh air to the attack that kept Hope on her toes._

_“Right.” She taps her own cleat against Kelley’s shin, which is a mottled mix of mud and grass stains. “You’re pretty messed up for someone who was taking it easy.”_

_“I don’t mind getting dirty.” Kelley winks and Hope laughs again, laughs a little louder when Alex yells at the forward to shut up from across the room. She backs away, that shit-eating grin possessing her whole face. “Tomorrow. I’ll bring the heat.”_

_“Looking forward to it,” Hope returns with her own smirk. “I love easy saves.”_

_It’s all she can do to look away for a second as Kelley turns around, headed back to her own side of the locker room, before her gaze is back on the forward. She can’t stop watching the way the girl walks, bobbing up and down to her own beat, arms and legs and and hands and mouth never still for even a second._

_She watches Kelley walk away, smiling to herself, a small tremor running through her chest._

_***_

_“Fuck!”_

_Kelley rolls to her side, pulling her knees to her chest as she grabs at her side. The pain is immediate, billowing under her rib cage and sucking the breath from her throat. She rolls to her knees, pressing her face into the ground, as Pia calls the play to a halt._

_There’s a hand on her back, padded and gentle, and over the sound of her hoarse breathing she can hear someone cursing quietly above her._

_“Fuck Kell, I’m sorry.” She turns her head slowly to the right to meet Hope’s eyes. The keeper is crouched by her side, one hand reached out tentatively to touch her._

_It was a good play, honestly, and Kelley had been a little too aggressive, flinging herself into the air to pursue a cross launched at a velocity too high for her to ever handle. Hope came out to challenge, her hands snatching the ball out of the air half a second before Kelley’s whole body came down on top of her. Somehow, Hope — thanks to a considerable amount of core strength, most likely — sidestepped and stumbled and kept herself upright. But Kelley fell to the ground with nothing to cushion the fall, twisting as she landed on her side._

_On her knees, Kelley knows that Hope did nothing wrong. But she’s fascinated by the look of concern that Hope is leveling at her. In total, they’ve spoken only a handful of words to one another, but their eyes seem to keep catching on each other, little glances and shy smiles that are forgotten almost as soon as they happen. Now, Hope isn’t looking away. Kelley sucks in a breath, a hint of humor already curling one side of her mouth upwards._

_“Can you try not being the greatest goalkeeper in the world every once in awhile?” Hope smiles at that, moving back to her feet and waving away Tobin. She sticks out a hand, thick and soft in its glove, and Kelley rises all the way to her knees, winces, then grabs the glove and pulls herself up onto her feet._

_“If you’re alright enough to give me sass, I think you’re okay to play.” Kelley just salutes, giving Hope a quick smack on the ass, and then Hope is playing the ball back out and Kelley is running towards the opposite goal, unaware of the way Hope’s eyes burn into the back of her jersey._

_***_

_“Seriously?”_

_Hope is looking at Kelley from the corners of her eyes, amusement completely unfettered in her voice._

_“What?” Kelley tucks her phone into her jacket pocket, attempting to conceal the screen, but Hope’s hands follow, tugging at the cord of the earbuds and pulling the phone partially back out into the open. There’s a moment when their hands scrabble against each other, and then Hope has her phone and glances at the screen momentarily before shaking her head and handing it back._

_“Justin Bieber?” Hope smirks, and Kelley smiles bashfully. “You sit next to me, you decide we’re listening to your music and you play Justin Bieber?”_

_“Hey.” Kelley tugs at the earbuds, pulling them from Hope’s ear and holding them out into the aisle when Hope’s jaw drops in fake shock. “You’re the one who forgot her headphones, and you’re the one who asked me to move seats to share. If you want to ride in silence, be my guest.”_

_Hope narrows her eyes in an imitation of her typical game face, jaw clenching, mouth pursing, but Kelley’s smile makes it hard to keep the posture for long. She sticks out one hand, and Kelley hands back the earbuds. Kelley doesn’t change the music, but the song is almost over, anyways, so Hope doesn’t mind too much. She doesn’t mind, either, when Kelley leans into her arm slightly, then fully, her chin drooping and then shooting back upwards as the night darkens outside their window._

_“You can sleep,” Hope whispers, and Kelley doesn’t hesitate, mumbling a soft ‘thank you’ before turning her face fully into Hope’s sweatshirt and closing her eyes. Seconds later, her breathing is soft, steady._

_The next morning, Hope looks up from her typical lonely spot towards the back of the bus to see Kelley standing over her, earbuds and phone in one hand._

_“I won’t play Bieber today.” It’s an offering of something more, and Hope can tell that, although she’s not sure what exactly. She just nods, pulling her bag off of the seat next to her and dropping it to her feet. Kelley slides in next to her, bringing the smell of vanilla and bubblegum. She hands out one earbud, then her phone._

_“You choose.” They ride to practice without speaking again, music filling the inches of space that separate them._

***

When did they get so messy? When did they slide from this gentle flirtation into an actual friendship, and how did it move so quickly into something so much more? How did this happen?

Hope used to beat herself up for this, press deeply into these memories and tear herself apart for every little misstep. Yes, she made massive mistakes and yes, she broke Kelley’s heart, but she was just as hard on herself over every time she didn’t return an ‘I love you,’ on every time she didn’t return a text. She used to hate herself for every time she hurt Kelley, big or small.

But in this moment, Hope had a hard time hating on herself. She looked down at Kelley in her arms, her face peaceful with sleep, her fingers just slightly curled into the fabric of Hope’s shirt. In this moment, she couldn’t help but think that if she had to do it all again, maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t change a thing.

She closed her eyes. Memories filled her each time she sucked in a breath. She faded into sleep slowly, her mind thick with regret and love, the two emotions that always mixed toxically together when she thought of her past with Kelley.

***

_“You’ve got to stop.” Tobin leans over and smacks a button on Kelley’s laptop, pausing her music._

_“What?” She remains lying on her back, scrolling through her phone, refusing to meet Tobin’s eyes._

_“This is depressing.” For a few quiet moments, Tobin searches for a new song, switching over to something acoustic and beachy and vaguely upbeat. “How long’s it been?”_

_“How long has what been?” Kelley’s response is met by a groan from Tobin and then a light smack to her stomach. She lets out a disgruntled noise, rolling away from Tobin._

_“Two and a half months.” The words hang in the air, and Kelley solemnly continues scrolling. She can feel Tobin sitting up beside her, feel her eyes digging into her back._

_Two and a half months of silence. Not a call, not a text, not a tweet. Nothing. No interaction. Kelley had called, she’d texted, she’d reached out and been rejected again and again until she gave up._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_Kelley shrugs. She doesn’t say it’s okay. It’s not. It’s anything but okay._

_***_

_“Are we gonna talk about this, or what?”_

_It’s their first and last confrontation. Kelley is standing in front of Hope in a half-full locker room, and her voice isn’t all that quiet, and she’s holding Hope’s gloves in both hands to keep the keeper from escaping quickly. She watches as Hope tosses her head one way and then the other, sizing up the players closest to them._

_“Talk about what?” Hope’s voice seems indifferent, but there’s a slight tremble in the last syllable, and Kelley takes another step forward, taking up space, trying to make her uncomfortable, to force her to meet her eyes._

_“Us.” She’s looking away. She refuses to look Kelley in the eye. The defender grinds her teeth, frustrated to no end. “Hope, you’re making my life hell. Come on.”_

_“No.” Hope reaches out, grabbing at the gloves, but Kelley holds on tightly. “Stop, Kelley.”_

_“We need to talk about this—“ She wrenches the gloves from Kelley’s hands in a quick movement, a movement that is almost violent in its urgency._

_“Shut up, Kelley.” Hope’s eyes are cold and suddenly Kelley wishes that she’d never looked at her. “Grow up. That’s my final answer.”_

_There’s a moment when Kelley is stuck, frozen, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, watching Hope wordlessly shove her gloves, her sweats, her tape into her training bag, watching her sit and begin to slide her cleats off. Her chest is swelling with something hot and furious and then it all comes out in a single motion. She slams Hope’s locker shut, the noise drawing the attention of every single player in the room._

_“Fuck you, Hope.” Kelley looks down at Hope, and there’s a flicker of pain in those blue eyes as the keeper lifts them up to look at her. Kelley is too angry to care, too angry to love. She wants to break Hope, so she doesn’t lower her voice, only raises it, spits out each word with venom. “They were right. I shouldn’t have fucking trusted you.”_

_She spins on her heel, a final quiet “bitch” falling from her mouth before she grabs her bag and storms towards the bus. Alex is immediately on her feet, sprinting after Kelley. Hope looks around the room — at Abby with her hands on her hips, Becky’s slightly narrowed eyes, the way Heather shakes her head as she turns away — and there’s familiarity in this uncomfortable quiet. As she zips her bag closed, she begins to feel her team pull away again._

_***_

_It’s nights later and Hope is knocking on Kelley's door and cursing herself already for this weakness. Or strength. Or whatever. Is it weak to be in love and is it strong to leave? Is it weak to know that she’ll never be enough for Kelley? Is it strong to say so herself?_

_Alex opens the door. Her face hardens when she sees Hope._

_“God, go away.” She starts to close the door, then stops herself, glances over her shoulder and opens it again. “Actually, you know what—“_

_She steps outside, forcing Hope to take a step backwards, almost stumbling over herself._

_“You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.” Alex jabs a finger quickly into Hope’s arm, and Hope feels anger bubbling over, feels herself losing control. “She loves you. She fucking loves you and you throw that away? Kelley only knows how to give and give and she gave you fucking everything and you just—“_

_“I didn’t come here to get bitched at.” Hope’s voice is harsh, but it only eggs Alex on more._

_“Yeah, well she didn’t come here to get her heart broken.” Alex’s hands are firm on her hips. “So stop. Get out of her life. You don’t fucking deserve her.”_

_“She’s a big girl, she can speak for herself,” Hope snarls, and now Alex is the one who loses control completely, and this is a side of the striker that Hope has only seen on the pitch in small flashes but it’s dangerous._

_“You fucking bitch.” Alex’s hands are shaking as she takes a step forwards and she somehow seems bigger than Hope in this moment. “You broke her. And you know that. Stop acting like she did anything wrong. Stop acting like you didn’t break her on purpose, like you didn’t just use her, stop acting so damn self righteous when we all know that you just cared about her because you knew you could throw her away once you were bored, so stop acting like you’re good enough for her, stop acting like you deserve her when we all know—“_

_Hope walks away. Honestly, it’s all she can do to keep from running away at a full sprint. She flinches as Alex keeps hurling words at her back. She keeps walking until she can’t hear the words anymore, but they remain in her mind, on loop, on repeat._

_She’s not good enough. She’s not good enough. She’s not enough._

_***_

_They’re drunk and Hope is married and Kelley’s hands are fisted in her sweater. They’re angry over a terrible match and Kelley is swaying and Hope is holding her up and holding her close._

_“Choose me.”_

_Kelley is begging and Hope is nodding, letting her in, and then there’s a hand on Kelley’s shoulder and she’s being dragged away._

_They’re never alone. And they will never let them be._

***

In case you’re curious, there is one thing that Hope would change, that she would take back in half a second without a moment’s hesitation or consideration.

She would wish for her team back. For the years back. For the trust back.

Because now, now she’s their hero. Now she’s a friend. Now her team trusts her, loves her. She has gained back the casual jokes and the easy comfort. She’s earned them back.

But those years, those years almost broke her. When only Carli and Abby and HAO would sit next to her, when Ashlyn was gentle yet reserved, when Heather was simply disappointed. There was a stillness that surrounded Hope. The anger dulled to a simple air of discontent, and most of the younger players weren’t even aware of it, weren’t aware that they gave her an unnecessarily wide berth. 

Hope herself didn’t notice it, not fully, until the distance was breached. Until Kelley sat next to her at breakfast again, and Morgan didn’t know any better but to sit on her other side. When JJ squirted ice water down the back of her neck after practice and ran away screaming. When Ali called her after a hard fall during a Reign game to ask how her shoulder was holding up. 

She had never noticed the quiet until Kelley filled her life with noise. And God, she had never noticed quite how lonely she was until she was no longer alone.

***

So you’re ready for the happy ending, aren’t you? You came for the love story and stayed for the happy ending, the horseback ride into the sunset with the happy couple kissing, on their way to an easy conclusion that shines with a Hollywood shimmer.

You won’t get that here. If you want that, stop reading. Imagine your own ending. It’ll be easier.

The thing about happy endings is that they end, and the thing about the life is that it doesn’t. Not like that. It doesn’t end with a kiss and a smile and a wedding. It doesn’t end with a witty one-liner and a fade to black. Life just goes on.

They don’t have a happy ending. But they have a happy life, a hard life, a good life.

This is not a happy ending, because the sun is about to rise on a new day for both of them. This moment will not fade to black, it will warm with daylight. They will wake up and face something new, the concept of a shared life, the concept of a shared love. There is so much they will not know to do, so much they will not want to do. 

They will be careless and they will be hurtful and they will crack at the edges. They will hold one another at night and press kisses into the fragile spots that hurt too much to hold. They will be strong and they will be weak at all the right and wrong moments. They will run. They will come back. And they will love, they will love, they will love.

But they have a few more hours. Let them sleep. Let them have peace. In the morning, they are beginning the rest of their lives.


	5. Tomorrow's Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, this has been fun to write. Thanks for all the kind words! Sorry this gets so cheesy, but I hope y'all have enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing :)

There are, Hope quickly learns, a few flaws in asking Kelley to move in with her.

The girl is problematic. All Hope can wonder, particularly in the first three weeks, is how exactly it is Kelley ever came to love her, how they ever became friends, how this ever even began to work.

Kelley decorates. She decorates everything. She fills mason jars with dirt and flowers and places them in the windowsill. She clutters the cabinets with brightly decorated mugs and mismatched ceramic plates and bowls. She buys tablecloths — Hope raises her eyebrows the first time she sees them, light green against the wood of the dining room table — and sets the table for every meal, including Chinese takeout.

She hangs a painting in the front hall. There are framed photos everywhere — above the fireplace, on her desk, in the guest room — and the only one that belongs to Hope is the picture on the bedside table of both of them, on their backs in the sand in Hawaii, their eyes squinting shut with smiles that reflect the sun. There’s a quilt on the couch and a bird feeder on the back porch and a record collection taking up a corner of the living room.

Kelley also eats. All the time. She wakes Hope up in the middle of the night on her way out of the bedroom to grab a handful almonds, she fixes breakfast and then fixes a snack hours later. And she always, always asks Hope what she wants to eat, nudging her in the ribs, suggesting Thai food then two minutes later deciding she’ll cook pasta, then looking to Hope for approval, as if this is the most vital decision of their day. Hope quickly learns to nod an immediate yes to ordering anything spicy and to be wary of Kelley’s suggestions to fix anything that isn’t from her grandmother’s recipe book.

And the music. The music is always on — not necessarily loud, but in the background, filling the quiet — and matching Kelley’s mood. For cooking and reading, it’s mellow and acoustic. For getting ready to go out anywhere, including the grocery store, it’s hip hop, blasted top-notch and accompanied by rather untalented dancing. Then there are the moods between, the late-night electronic sessions, the classic oldies that Hope actually knows the words to, the musicals that Kelley performs enthusiastically over breakfast.

It takes three weeks for Hope to realize that she doesn’t, actually, mind it. She doesn’t mind any of it. The decorations fill the space so much that she wonders how the rooms ever felt full, how she herself didn’t feel empty in the apartment before Kelley moved in. In three weeks, she eats a wider variety of cuisines and recipes than she’d had in the past year, and she discovers that Kelley is a good cook and an even better baker, that she loves the way Kelley sings recipes quietly to herself under her breath while she’s mixing. The first time she meets Kelley’s eyes over dinner at the table — which was set with flowers and candles, as if they were a five-star restaurant — she can’t keep the smile off of her face.

And God, the first time that Kelley turns on The Righteous Brothers and asks Hope to slow dance barefoot in the kitchen, she thinks she’s going to fall apart right then, right there, with Kelley’s hand soft on the small of her back and the music swelling to fill her chest. She kisses Kelley to keep herself from trembling, to keep herself anchored, to remind herself that this is real.

***

A little less than a year after Kelley moves in, Hope decides they could use a vacation.

It’s mid-October, a week after the NSWL Championships, and the Reign took second place yet again and there’s too much frustration in their little apartment, the two of them cooped up with too much rain in the city and not enough to do in the off season. Kelley is quiet and grumpy, spending most of her time with her knees tucked to her chest in the left corner of the couch.

So Hope suggests they take a break, somewhere far away where they can reset and learn how to breathe again. Kelley leaps at the idea, but when Hope asks where they should go, she shrugs, a small smile on her face.

“Surprise me,” she says. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Hope can’t help but laugh at how cheesy that is, but she goes with it, doesn’t question it, because seeing Kelley match the gloomy mood of Seattle for the last week has been unsettling to say the least. 

For any other trip, for anyone else, Hope would’ve spent days researching where to go. But for Kelley, it takes minutes to decide.

“How should I pack?” Kelley asks a few days later, humming under her breath as she moves behind Hope, her hand trailing across her shoulders carelessly as she walks past.

“Warm.” Hope says, not looking up from her book. “I can pack for you, if you want me to.”

“Okay,” Kelley says with a small chuckle. “Just make sure you don’t accidentally leave out my Birks.”

“There is no way in hell I am packing those things for you,” Hope mutters with a small chuckle, and Kelley flops onto the couch next to her with a look of fake anger that dissolves into something slightly different, and soon Hope is letting her push the book out of her hands, letting her straddling Hope’s hips and drop her lips to her throat, forcing a sigh of a moan out of her lips as the rain comes down outside.

They leave on a Sunday, a crisp morning where the rain gives way to a drizzle which gives way to a brief overcast period, the sun peaking through the clouds for a few blissful seconds. Kelley keeps poking at Hope’s pockets, curious, trying to glimpse the boarding pass. They finally arrive at their terminal and Kelley glances up, then freezes. Her face is everything Hope could’ve asked for. She turns slowly, smile wide, eyes bright.

London.

***

Their plane touches down, shaking Kelley awake, and for a moment it feels like she’s awakening in a memory. The sky is bright and clear today and it feels like walking back into their past.

Traveling with Hope is everything that Kelley could ask for, because she’s equal parts curious and ambivalent, nudging Kelley to turn down random streets or buy something from a food truck they pass and just as happy to let herself be led into shops, a smile coloring each of her movements, filling Kelley with brightness as they wander together. For several days it’s just them and London, revisiting restaurants from the Olympics and trying new places, spending long hours in bed together, sheets tangled and skin pressed onto skin.

On their fourth day, Hope tells Kelley there’s one more surprise to this adventure. And Kelley knows. At least some part of her knows what comes next, because she’s seen the movies and read the books and she knows how happy endings are supposed to go.

But still, there’s a hitch in her breath when their cab pulls up outside of Wembley Stadium. For several seconds, she’s immobile in the backseat, unsure of how to swing her legs out of the door, uncertain of her own ability to stand up. Hope is waiting outside, one hand stretched out, the other tucked into the pocket of her coat, her smile shadowed by the slightest of nerves.

“Come on, Kell.” She takes Hope’s hand, intertwining their fingers.

There’s a side door left unlocked, and Hope is trying to act casual but Kelley can see the way her shoulders shake as she leads Kelley inside, through a twisting hall and into a dark tunnel and then out onto the grass of the stadium.

It’s been five years. The last time they were here, it was a cacophony of noise, an utter roar, swelling and rumbling and overwhelming them both. The last time they were here, gold medals were heavy around their necks and their jerseys were drenched in champagne. 

Kelley wanders to the middle of the pitch, the grass under her feet feeling like home. She tilts her head back, closing her eyes, spreading her arms wide, soaking in the memories that still feel close as yesterday, warm, in this stadium.

***  
 _  
The medal is weightless around Kelley’s neck. She keeps reaching up to touch it, holding it in her hands. She leans over and Hope catches her eye, her smile so open, so free, and this is the happiest she’s ever seen her keeper. That smile keeps Kelley hooked to the ground, keeps her from flying away, but she’s absolutely certain that if it weren’t for Hope, she wouldn’t be able to keep her feet on the pitch._

***

“Thank you for believing in me first.” Kelley turns and Hope is standing only a few paces behind her, hands clasped behind her back, eyes fierce with determination, and Kelley knows. Oh God, she knows, and it’s all she can do to keep her knees from buckling underneath her.

“Thank you for believing that I was worth love.” Hope’s voice trembles, and Kelley takes a step forward, reaching for her hand. “Thank you for loving me when I didn’t think I was worth it. Thank you for never leaving, for never giving up. Thank you for making me open up.”

“Hope—“ But she squeezes Kelley’s hand, and she quiets, because she can tell that Hope has been practicing this and that if she interrupts she might never get it all out.

“Kelley, I love you more deeply, more fiercely than I knew was possible.” And now Hope is pushing one hand into her pocket, and she’s fumbling with a small black box. “I brought you here to this stadium because I still remember, all these years later, the way you made my heart feel that day, the way you eclipsed every other part of my life. You are more to me than any trophy, than any medal, and if I can keep you for another day, that would be the greatest accomplishment of my life. But Kelley—“

And now she’s dropping to one knee and she looks shy as hell and Kelley has both hands over her face like it’s a dumb rom com and she doesn’t even care because she’s not sure she’s breathing at this point anymore.

“I’m going to be selfish and ask for a lifetime.” Hope looks up and she looks so tender, so fragile, as she holds the ring out. “Marry me?”

There isn’t a need for Kelley to say yes. She drops to her knees, palms enveloping Hope’s hands and the ring, her mouth tracing its way across Hope’s face, and the stadium is empty but Kelley can hear it, she can hear the roar of the crowd, and she must have landed in a memory of a dream because in this moment, it’s hard to believe that she is awake.

*** 

There are, Hope quickly learns, a multitude of flaws in asking Kelley to marry her.

The core of it boils down to the fact that Kelley is still a Georgia girl at heart, and her family is the type of family to breed debutantes and sorority girls, which means that she and her mother and her sister and pretty much every woman in her family have expectations. Lots of them.

Especially Kelley.

She has a Pinterest board for her wedding and a separate one for her reception, something Hope was never aware of because both boards are kept on “private.” They arrive home in Washington and after a week, Kelley becomes a nervous ball of wedding-fueled energy that seems incapable of focusing on much else.

Alex and Sydney certainly don’t help, but Ali is the worst, even from three time zones away. Hope will wake up in the morning to several emails with different questions and suggestions. She always sends these messages to Kelley, but Hope is cc’ed into the chain, meaning that the plethora of questions and debates that unfold afterwards end up in Hope’s inbox as well. After a week of this, Hope mutes her Gmail app just to keep herself from going insane.

It’s not that she isn’t excited to marry Kelley. Dear God, she can’t wait, can’t stop thinking about how beautiful Kelley will look, how finally, finally she can prove that she’s never going anywhere, that she will be by her side for the rest of the life they have together.

Hope’s pleasures come in the little things, in buying flowers at the shop down the street and saying that they’re for her fiancee, in telling strangers quietly when their date is, how long they’ve known each other, what they do for a living.

The greatest joy was in telling the team. They had a GroupMe just for the 23 of them, one that was typically used sparingly outside of camp unless Emily and Kling went on a rampage with sharing gifs, but Hope had wanted to tell them all at once, to not miss anyone or give anyone preference, despite the fact that she knew this would piss off Carli and Alex and Tobin and, quite frankly, half of the team who considered themselves the best option to hear the news first.

She took the picture quickly, on their cab ride back to the hotel, a simple shot of their hands intertwined, Kelley’s adorned with a diamond. She opened GroupMe, added the photo and sat thinking about a caption for several seconds, long enough the Kelley leaned over and tried to peek at her screen, and Hope was forced to duck away, shielding what she was doing.

“Finally put a ring on it,” she tapped out, then hit ‘send.' The notification lit up Kelley’s phone, and when she glanced down her grin — already impossibly wide — grew as she saw the pride in Hope’s smirk, in the way she shrugged her shoulders like it wasn’t that big of a deal.

“Brace yourself,” Kelley laughed, nudging Hope with her shoulder and kissing her gently on the cheek. It took seconds, and then their phones vibrated, once, then twice, then too many times to count.

Alex: WHAT  
Alex: WHAT  
Alex: HOLY SHIT  
Alex: DEAR GOD  
Kriegs: Oh my god congratulations!!!! Hire me as wedding planner?  
Pinoe: OUR GALS!!! So proud <3  
Carli: This is fantastic, I’m so proud of both of you.  
Alex: OH MY GOD  
Kling: HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT  
Jules: Thanks for making me break down crying in the middle of the grocery store  
Jules: But seriously, congratulations both of you!  
Alex: OH MY GOD

Kelley leaned her head against Hope’s shoulder, and they laughed, reading off of the same screen, watching the responses pour in at such a rapid rate that Kelley had to hold her finger to the screen and scroll slowly through them. They arrived at the hotel, made their way up to their room with the messages still flooding in.

Tobin: Congratulations you two!   
Allie: Love you both, congrats!  
Alex: OH MY GOD  
Pinoe: Someone sedate baby horse, she’s having a stroke  
Press: I’m in the same boat as Jules, that kind of thing should come with a warning or something. Love you both!  
Morgan: CONGRATS!!!!  
Ashlyn: Holy shit this is exciting  
Becky: Congratulations you two!  
Alex: OH MY GOD  
Pinoe: Seriously, someone sedate her  
Crystal: holy shit congratulations babes! happy for you!  
Crystal: engagement party as soon as you get back?!  
Alex: OH MY GOD

Hope’s phone lit up with a separate text, and she glanced at it before laughing out loud.

Carli Lloyd: Seriously? The group chat comes before me?

She hardly had time to send a response before another, longer text came through.

Alyssa: Hey boss, congrats on the engagement. I’m so happy for you both. I think the world of you both and I have so much respect for you, on and off the pitch. You deserve it all.

She smiled even wider, then glanced over at Kelley, who was holding her screen ridiculously close to Hope’s face to read a series of texts.

Alex: OH MY GOD  
Alex: YOU DIDN’T TELL ME????  
Alex: DID YOU THINKT HIS WAS OKK????  
Alex: ANSWER ME

They laughed, and Hope grabbed Kelley’s phone and placed it on the bedside table, wrapped her fiancee — she repeated that word in her brain, her fiancee, her fiancee, her fiancee — in her arms and pressed a kiss to her head.

“I love you.” And for the rest of the night, they left their phones ignored.

This was Hope’s quiet joy — the long-distance phone call from Abby the next day, the FaceTime from Heather that Kelley pulled her into, the long series of texts from Ali detailing just how proud she was of how far she had come. There was joy and there was pride in knowing that she was the woman she had become, a woman who was deserving of Kelley.

But then they arrived home, and the reality of planning this, of getting married O’Hara-style kicked in, and Hope realized that she was in deeper than she had expected.

She didn’t say anything until Alex came in town and insisted on taking Hope, and only Hope, out for drinks. 

They were friends again, a feat that took several years of patience after that first and final fight in the hall. It came back in slow waves, then rather suddenly in the World Cup, just as many other things came back as well. The Victory Tour was a period of trust, of remembrance, of acceptance. They earned back familiarity, sewed up old wounds with new jokes and new memories, and they worked towards the same place, the same goal.

Forgiveness. 

Two years before, they stood inches apart in a hotel hallway and Alex was ready to rip Hope to shreds. Can you imagine, now, the two of them sitting across from each other, wine glasses in hand and laughter in their eyes? It took months and years. It took soccer. And it took Kelley.

“So how are you holding up with all the wedding planning?” Alex asked before Hope even had the chance to take a drink, and she groaned, dropping her head to the table.

“There’s so much,” Hope muttered, shaking her head. “And it’s not that I mind, not really, but it’s too much to think about. I just want to be with her.”

Alex studied her carefully.

“You don’t want a big wedding, do you?” Hope shook her head, but she looked up at Alex with a look of fierce protectiveness in her eyes.

“But Kelley does.” Hope sighed and took a long swallow of her wine. “And I’ll do anything for her."

And she does. She doesn’t want to taste cakes, but she spends a whole morning sampling them just to appease Kelley. She follows her around the city in search of various necessities, spends an afternoon and then an evening and then into the early morning on Skype with Karen attempting to understand what they need to do. When it becomes too much, she looks at Kelley and takes a deep breath. Because this is worth it. Because Kelley is worth it.

On a Saturday in March, Kelley’s phone vibrates just as she’s launching into a long, passionate speech about the importance of selecting the proper place to register. She holds up one finger to Hope, who is watching with an amused smirk, before glancing at her phone.

“It’s my mom.” She points at Hope, then slides three magazines across the kitchen counter. Hope picks it up, understanding the implication — she is expected to contribute to this decision. It’s all she can do to keep from laughing as Kelley answers her phone.

“Hey mama,” Kelley says, tucking a piece of hair behind one ear, her smile sweet as she walks across the room. 

She always paces when she’s on the phone, tracing patterns across the living room, up and down the stairs, onto the porch and back inside, tidy circles around the island in the kitchen. One weekend, Hope had visited Alyssa in Chicago for a handful of days. She called Kelley from her hotel room, stretched out on her back on the floor, and Kelley talked her ear off for an hour. Hope had paused at an odd noise in the background.

“Kell?” Her voice was tinged with a smile. “Are the dogs following you again?”

There was a soft laugh. The dogs had followed her up and down the stairs, into the guest room, into the front yard, for the entire hour-long conversation.

“They miss you.” They both laughed, and then Hope yawned and admitted that she needed sleep. She fell asleep with a smile tucked behind her lips, imaging Kelley wandering, the dogs at her heels, her face soft and gentle.

Now, Kelley crosses the living room, her back to Hope, who flips through the magazine. She couldn’t care less what they register for, but something in Kelley’s insistency tells her that this is yet another detail of the wedding that is vitally important, if not to Kelley then to her mother or her family or her friends, and that alone is enough to make her look carefully at each page, her other hand idly scratching behind one of the dog’s ears.

“What?” Hope’s head jerks up at the noise of Kelley’s voice, half an octave higher than normal, the way the syllable catches, rips as she speaks. Kelley is sinking slowly into the couch, and she’s facing away but just from the slump of her shoulders Hope can tell that something has knocked the wind out of her. She barely makes it to the couch, barely has time to place her hands on Kelley’s shoulders, before the tears begin.

“Mom, no, stop, no—” Kelley’s whole body is shaking and Hope circles the couch, drops into a crouch, hands on Kelley’s knees, her chest caving in as she watches her fiancee double over, one hand covering her mouth as she struggles to gasp out words. Seconds later, Hope is taking the phone from her hands, tugging her close with one arm and listening to Karen on the other line. She hangs up and for minutes that feel like hours she just holds Kelley, just presses her close and tries to absorb as much of the hurt as possible.

It’s a blur of packing a carry-on bag, forcing Kelley into a sweatshirt, calling Megan and begging her to look after the dogs for the week. Hope struggles to keep herself from topping 85 on the highway — the flight won’t get there any faster if she speeds, she is extremely aware of this, but the way Kelley trembles in the passenger seat makes it difficult to keep her speed down — and they arrive at the airport an hour early. This turns out to be an even bigger mistake, because Kelley simply isn’t capable of keeping herself together, and all Hope can do is cradle her face between her palms and whisper quiet confirmations.

On the plane, Kelley asks Hope to pray with her. It’s not something she’s ever been quite comfortable with, but she intertwines their fingers without a second thought. Kelley prays out loud. Her words are casual, as if these are conversations she’s used to having, but her tone is pleading, begging, desperate.

Hope closes her eyes. She’s not sure who she’s pleading with, but she asks for a miracle, bargaining for Kelley’s happiness. She would give anything to fix this.

It was a car crash, a pick-up truck that barreled through a stop sign at 40 mph and slammed straight into the passenger side of a four-door sedan, flipping the car three times. The driver was Kelley’s father.

Kelley is quiet, despondent in the hospital. Hope feels helpless, so she goes through the motions that she’s fairly certain she’s supposed to go through, the gestures she never felt the urge to perform before. She hugs Karen, then Jerry and Erin, holding each of them a second longer. She buys cups of coffee and sacks of burgers and fries and brings them back to the rapidly increasing group of family and friends congregating around Kelley. For awhile, she’s unsure of how or where to insert herself, standing back, watching.

Then Kelley is suddenly looking around, her eyes wide and panicky until they settle on Hope, and it feels like less than a second between Hope leaning against the wall and Hope wrapping her arms around Kelley. She sits at her side for hours, letting the smaller woman fall asleep against her, staying awake and alert.

In the end, he’s okay. 

The passenger side absorbed a good deal of impact, but the roll broke his arm in two places, cracked ribs, damaged his knee and caused a concussion. But he’s okay.

“He’s going to be just fine,” the doctor says with a reassuring half-smile, and Hope feels Kelley’s knees buckle slightly. She wraps an arm around Kelley from behind, her forearm across Kelley’s chest, her hand pressing her fiancee shoulder gently back into torso, her other hand resting lightly on her hip. Kelley drops her head for a moment, and Karen is letting out a sigh of relief, and Erin is leaning into Hope’s side, her forehead pressed into Hope’s bicep, her smile faint but growing.

“Can we see him?” There’s a nod and then a quick, frantic walk down a long, starched-white hallway. Dan is weak but his smile is strong as his family surrounds him, their voices low and anxious. He hugs his wife, his children, then looks up at Hope, who is leaning in the doorway, watching from afar yet again.

“Where’s my other daughter?” he asks, and his voice is so gentle in the way it teases, and Hope smiles as she gives him a hug, smiles as Karen asks how he’s feeling again, and then again two minutes later. She smiles as Kelley leans into her, arms wrapped around her waist unconsciously, relief pouring off her body in waves.

A week later, Dan is released from the hospital, although bound to a wheelchair until his knee is out of its brace and his arm is out of its sling. They spend another week in Georgia, Hope and Kelley finding peace in long nights on the back porch and long walks to the lake by O’Hara’s house. 

There’s something about eating breakfast with Erin and watching basketball with Jerry that makes Hope feel at home, punctuated by the lazy moments when Kelley walks into the living room after a run to the store for ice cream, pressing a kiss to Hope’s forehead and asking what they’re watching before heading upstairs to shower. There’s something about the O’Hara family that feels like, well, like family, like they’ve already accepted her invitation to join them before she even asked, like she was filling a place at their table that had always been empty before.

They return to Washington and something in Kelley changes. She is quiet, her mood tense whenever they are home, and for the first few days she insists they eat every meal out, drags Hope along on adventures that wake them up early in the morning and get them home too late to do anything but fall into bed half-asleep before they even hit the mattress.

Hope doesn’t ask. She waits. And eventually, standing in the kitchen with a mug of tea on their fourth morning home, Kelley explodes.

“Fuck the wedding." She looks up at Hope with guilt tinging her eyes, an apology already forming. “I’m sorry, Hope, I really want to marry you and it will be the best day of my life, hands down, and I swear that no gold medal or World Cup could beat out that ring, but you just have to understand none of this—“

Kelley gestures around at the three ring binders and glossy magazines on the kitchen counter, the Pinterest board open on her laptop.

“This doesn’t matter!” She threw her hands up in the air, and it was all Hope could do to bite back her smile. “It took the biggest fucking wakeup call for me to realize this, that none of this matters! You never wanted this, you wanted a simple dress and a simple ceremony and my family and our teams and that was it, that was all you wanted and I was so stupid, insisting we do all this Southern sorority girl bullshit and I—“

Her “Nerd Nation” shirt is riding up slightly, revealing just a small strip of tan stomach above her jeans, and Hope has a warm feeling low in her stomach as she steps forward, closing Kelley’s mouth with a kiss.

“I love you.” She kisses her again and again, pressing her back into the kitchen counter, her fingers toying with the edges of Kelley’s shirt. They are both suddenly and acutely aware that it’s been over two weeks since they’ve done more than kiss chastely, quickly — a century in both of their books, but particularly for Kelley — and this realization does nothing for the warmth blossoming in Hope’s gut. Then Kelley is blindly pushing all of the wedding planning materials off the island behind her, raising herself easily onto the marble counter without even breaking the kiss, wrapping her legs around Hope to drag her closer.

“Let’s cancel the wedding,” she whispers into Hope’s ear as she tugs at her shirt, shooting her a frustrated glance before Hope acquiesces and pulls her top off. “Let’s make it small. Just us and the people who love us. Nothing more.”

Hope nods as she pulls Kelley’s shirt off, pressing a kiss against her clavicle as she unclasps her bra. Kelley lets out a light gasp, nails scrabbling against Hope’s back as she presses closer. They kiss until they can’t breathe and they kiss for a moment longer, and Hope is sucking her breath in and out, fumbling and stumbling as she unbuttons Kelley’s jeans.

“We can do dress shopping in one day,” Kelley mumbles, dropping her mouth to Hope’s shoulder and letting out a slight moan as her pants are tugged a little lower. She lifts herself off the counter and then she’s wearing nothing and Hope’s skin is pressed all over her. “And we can do just a small little reception, something really low-key.”

“Mhmm.” Hope’s hands are on the small of her back and her mouth is everywhere, then nowhere, then back against her lips.

“And we don’t even have to invite Sky Blue, just maybe a few of them, and the national team.” Kelley’s hands wind their way into Hope’s hair. “I mean, not just the team right now, I mean Abby and Cap and all of them will need to be there—“

“Kelley.” Hope kisses Kelley’s throat, the small canyon between her breasts, trails her tongue further down towards her belly button and smiles at the immediate buck of her hips. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Make me.” It’s the same line, the same smirk, that gets Hope every single time, even years later.

She drops to her knees and shuts Kelley the fuck up.

***

They’re married a month and a half later. The entire national team, past and present, drops their plans to attend. Crystal jokes that someone should’ve given the NWSL a heads up so that they could cancel their games for the weekend, and Hope laughs.

It’s small and it’s simple. All in all, the ceremony takes half an hour, maybe a few minutes less. Ali cries quietly and Ashlyn pretends to have something in her eyes and Abby just loses it, shoulders shaking as Syd rubs her shoulder with a small smile.

Hope cries too.

She tries to hide it, but the tears start slow when she first sees Kelley and increase in volume and intensity with every step down the aisle.

Hope cries and Kelley kisses the tears away.

***

There’s an even smaller ceremony later, just before they leave for their honeymoon. It’s the two of them, alone at dusk in jeans and t-shirts. Hope drops into a crouch, her fingers pressed into the soft, well-trimmed grass of the cemetery. Kelley crouches next to her, resting one hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, Grandma Alice.” Hope’s voice is low and shaky with tears and thick with pride. “I want you to meet my wife."

***

At what point does a love story end?

There isn’t, of course, an end. Not for the two of them, at least. And here’s the biggest secret, the greatest tragedy and beauty of all of this — even if they had ended, even if they had never started, part of this would go on. The part of them that stuck on one another that first day, in that first moment, in that first glance, that small, infinitesimal part of their souls would have remained in love forever.

So this love story won’t end. It can’t end. But there was a day when Kelley realized that this was forever. And that, of all moments, seems the best to end this telling, this version of their story.

It wasn’t their wedding day. It was years later, a Tuesday night, and it was raining.

Hope couldn’t get pregnant. 

She was 38 years at old at this point, and she knew this was at the edge of the spectrum of possibility for a pregnancy, but she was healthy and she had assumed this would work. Both of them had. They had waited so long, for another World Cup and another Olympics, and now their waiting seemed as if it was for nothing.

As it turned out, Hope had been too healthy. Her BMI had teetered close to unhealthy, in fact, because for years she had walked the line of keeping her body as trim as possible, minimizing fat and adding muscle each year. This was the perfect formula for becoming an Olympic champion, but it was not the perfect formula for growing a child.

This miscarriage was her third, and her final, and she had given up. It was the first thing Kelley had ever seen Hope give up on. They were sitting in the park two blocks from their house, Hope seeming small in her navy sweater, and Kelley kept both hands wrapped around her wrists.

“I let you down.” Hope’s voice was small, and Kelly wished she could fill her with something bright, with something happy.

“Never.” She pressed a kiss to Hope’s hair, soft, just a brush of lips. “You could never let me down.”

“I wanted kids.” The tears didn’t come anymore. For months, Hope had cried over this. Now, her shoulders remained still, her hands in her lap, one finger absently picking at a cuticle. “I wanted this so badly. I don’t get it. I just—“

“I know.” And Kelley dragged her into a hug, holding Hope as she went limp, as she halfheartedly wrapped an arm around Kelley’s back, resting her head on her shoulder. “Hope, I love you.”

They stayed like this for awhile, watching couples on bikes, a boy trying to get his dog to fetch.

“Nothing is going to take me from you.” Kelley said it as if she was first realizing it, as if this was the first time she had looked at herself, asked herself the question and come to this conclusion. As if she had never known that she could love someone quite this much. “No matter what happens, I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”

And Hope nodded. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. They sat together for hours, until the night was too chill to stay out in any longer.

In this moment, they were not happy. In this moment, they were not at peace. But in this moment, Kelley knew she would never run, she would never hide, she would never be afraid for them again. In this moment, she knew that the future would bring more sadness like this night, but she trusted, she finally trusted, that this sadness would always be outweighed by joy. Because despite the defeat of this night and the failure of the past months, Kelley crawled into bed next to Hope, pressed a kiss to her cheek and poked her side gently to elicit the smallest of smiles before turning out the light. And that was enough.

She wasn’t going anywhere. She never would.

***  
 _  
For Hope, this moment happened years before. It happened on the pitch, the pitch that was theirs, the pitch where she would always belong to Kelley. For Hope, she knew this truth in three second, in three heartbeats, in the first golden moments of her final Olympic Games._

_One._

_She falls to her knees as the crowd’s roar reaches a new level, to the point where she can't even pick out a modulation in pitch, where she can't tell where her own voice stops and the crowd’s begins. She presses her face into her gloves._

_Two._

_She looks up and there is Kelley, who played every minute of this game and of the games before, who is drenched in sweat and stained with grass, who was reckless and aggressive and a whole new type of genius in the 103rd minute, who looks like a savior and is smiling, fists clenched above her head, as she runs across the whole 90 yards, straight for Hope’s goal box._

_Three._

_Kelley drops into a slide, arms spread. She crashes into Hope and it’s all she can do to hold on for dear life. She presses a kiss to her forehead, another to her cheek, and she has no words to describe this moment, this feeling. But as she holds Kelley on her knees in the grass of an Olympic stadium, Hope knows one thing._

_Hope will always be the one who Kelley runs to. And she will never, ever let go._


End file.
